Consumer Directed Health to Social Media…’Consumerism’ Has Become the Undeniable Force in Healthcare

Healthcare can no longer deny nor ignore the importance of social media.  As a communication platform, it’s being used to educate, engage and empower consumers about topics ranging from legislation, hospital rankings, and ER wait times, to patient satisfaction, chronic illness management and health improvement.  Collaborative applications around seeking, sorting, assessing and ranking health information and experience have become part of our connected culture.

As “consumerism” increasingly impacts the healthcare landscape – payers, providers and other healthcare stakeholders are investing in technologies ranging from collaboration and contact center tools, to next generation video and self service platforms.  Consumerism is forcing these organizations to change their cultural barriers to how customer interactions need to be supported, and the pace of legislative mandates is exposing the healthcare information systems that can’t nimbly react to creating new products, or support online conversations.

Blogger Ed Bennet tracks 1,188 hospitals which are proving their seriousness about social media usage as they update:

• 548 YouTube Channels
• 1018 Facebook pages
• 788 Twitter Accounts
• 458 LinkedIn Accounts
• 913 Foursquare
• 137 Blogs

The impact of social media in healthcare goes beyond just an inexpensive channel that targets consumers.  Social media is fundamentally changing how payers, providers, and healthcare stakeholders manage their brand and influence purchasing decisions.

• For payers its managing customer service touch points through insurance exchanges, one of the few ways for them to maintain loyalty.

• For providers its connecting care providers with patients and is no longer about a gadget or app, but for measurable opportunities to share knowledge, build loyalty and improve processes that can influence how they manage care and patient relationships.

• For other healthcare stakeholders it’s supporting their brand and customer interactions with thoughtful, engaged support allowing for the ability to listen in on conversations already occurring about the industry, products, news, issues, etc.

Social media is a powerful source of information for consumers, and an equally powerful communication channel for providers of health information and support services.  For payers, providers and other healthcare stakeholders, TripleTree considers social media the lowest cost enabler of consumerism with a technical heritage linking it to cloud-based CRM and collaboration platforms.  In addition, social media is a cornerstone for marketing and branding initiatives in many industries.   With social media in healthcare, the old models for marketing, sales and service have been transformed.

Let us know what you think.

Chris Hoffmann

Chris Hoffmann is a Senior Director at TripleTree covering Cloud, SaaS and enterprise applications and specializes in CRM, loyalty and collaboration solutions across numerous industries. Follow Chris on Twitter or e-mail him at choffmann@triple-tree.com.

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A Big Week for ACOs

Given that this Friday is the deadline for applying for CMS ACO “Pioneer” status and is also the assumed release date for the final ACO regulations, this is sure to be a busy week for ACO news.

And as if we needed more proof that still no one knows how ACO adoption is going to shake out, we took note of the following last week:  on August 19^th, Forbes published a blog post titled “How ObamaCare is Destroying Accountable Care Organizations.”   (This was based on a post by noted healthcare policy analyst John Goodman: “Health Care Schizophrenia” )

As a key argument, the post cites how an innovative medical group in Texas called IntegraNet wouldn’t qualify for CMS ACO status, despite all the good work they are doing around measuring practicing evidence-based medicine and driving down costs because they rely on a Fee-for-Service model.

One week later, on August 26th, guess what happens?  IntegraNet became one of the first groups in the country to formally apply for ACO designation.  (To be completely fair to Goodman and to Forbes, IntegraNet clearly states that they are applying early in order to have some influence on the “burdensome rules” imposed in the regulation).

However this drama plays out, we here at TripleTree have been thinking a bit about the broader picture.  While most of the drama and headline news (and criticism!) is happening at the federal level of the CMS ACO program, there are a number of hospitals and physician groups that have quietly undertaken their own shared savings and bundled payments experiments.

In fact, Modern Healthcare published its first survey of accountable care organizations this week, identifying 13 ACOs respondents around the country (this despite the fact that CMS ACO program does not launch until 2012). To us, these experiments are the real market opportunity for ACOs, and one that has finally gotten some deserved attention on the back of the government’s healthcare reform legislation.

In fact, a great example can be seen here in our backyard with Fairview Health System’s developing relationship with the payer Medica.  A case study can be found here, but in short:  Fairview, a seven-hospital system with 49 clinics and 450 employed physicians, and Medica, with 1.6m members in the upper Midwest, decided that they could seek a more mutually beneficial relationship.  In 2009, they entered into a contract that pays Fairview based on the achievement of defined outcomes for quality and total risk-adjusted cost of care based on Fairview’s performance on certain diabetes and vascular care measures.  Essentially, if Medica members have better outcomes and lower costs than the community at large, Fairview shares in those savings.  Preliminary data is encouraging, though the relationship is requiring a “total cultural transformation” on the hospital system’s part, including a total redesign of workflow, compensation, and responsibilities. (Just think of what kind of transformation will be required to measure and achieve CMS’s 65 proposed quality measurements!)

While these quiet moves will never get the attention that Highmark’s acquisition of West Penn Alleghany that we profiled recently, this the real story of the ACO debate going on right now.  These experimental relationships between providers and payers are the ones that will prove if shared savings and bundled payments can truly bend the proverbial cost curve.

Let us know what you think.

Conor Green

Conor Green is a Vice President at TripleTree covering the healthcare industry, and specializing in revenue cycle management and tech-enabled business services. You can email Conor at cgreen@triple-tree.com.

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