5.10.2018 Rusty Yeager – SVP & CIO, Encompass Health

Look at a dozen Medicare beneficiaries admitted into a hospital and you will see five who likely are destined to be treated in a post-acute care setting. About 42 percent of Medicare fee-for-service patients are discharged to skilled nursing facilities, home health agencies, inpatient rehabilitation facilities or long-term care hospitals, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC). Medicare spends about $60 billion annually on post-acute care services.

Despite the volume of patients who transfer from a hospital to post-acute care setting, we still are challenged with sharing important information that would improve our ability to provide quality care. As CIOs and senior healthcare IT executives, we have an opportunity to close that gap.

This month, CHIME announced that we have joined the Long Term and Post Acute Care (LTPAC) Health IT Summit as a collaborative member. The summit, where I am participating on a cybersecurity panel, is June 24-26 at the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C. The summit is being organized by LeadingAge, an association for nonprofit providers of aging services, and its Center for Aging Services Technologies (CAST).

As part of this collaboration, LeadingAge CAST has extended a $100 discount to any CHIME member who would like to attend the summit. This is a phenomenal opportunity to connect with healthcare strategists, medical directors, directors of nursing in long-term and post-acute care provider organizations, and the acute healthcare sector – as well as payers serving the growing older adult population. Presenters will discuss how technology connects our various healthcare systems in an era that emphasizes value. Besides cybersecurity, topics will include interoperability, innovative care delivery and payment models, and health information exchanges.

As CIOs, we know that appropriate coordination of care across healthcare settings increases quality and lowers costs; together, those create the value-based care that is increasingly driving reimbursement for both acute and post-acute healthcare systems.

Imagine if two of those five Medicare beneficiaries mentioned earlier were admitted to two different hospitals for heart failure, which is one of the conditions that fall under Medicare’s Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program. Both are treated and transferred to post-acute care facilities, where one facility can seamlessly exchange patient data with the discharging hospital, and the other can’t.  Imagine again, if it was one of your loved ones who was one of the patients. Which one of these patients would you want them to be?

I am pleased to participate in an event that brings our healthcare communities together to learn more about each other’s systems and processes and hopefully bridge the divides between the venues of care. Please consider joining me at the summit. You can learn more about the program and register here. You will need to log in to see the discount code.

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