Rio Grande Valley Health Information Exchange and University of Texas Health Science Center Select Wellcentive to Manage Health and Cost of Medicaid and Uninsured Populations

ATLANTA, Nov. 18, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Rio Grande Valley Health Information Exchange (RGV HIE), in partnership with University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health campus in Brownsville, has selected Wellcentive's suite of population health management solutions and services.  Wellcentive will empower providers in a four-county area to partner with hospitals and clinics in the region to better manage the health of their Medicaid and uninsured patient populations, initially focusing on the care of patients with diabetes.

The project covers Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr, and Willacy counties. RGV HIE additionally serves patients in Jim Hogg, Webb, and Zapata counties. The project area has one of the highest rates of Type II diabetes in the U.S. — approximately 30 percent of its adult population suffers from the disease, and another 30 percent have prediabetes.

Under the direction of UTHealth, RGV HIE will implement the Wellcentive solution to establish a diabetes registry and deliver population health management tools to physician practices to identify and track co-morbidities, engage at-risk patients and reduce medical costs.  The Texas region has a large Medicaid population and the highest uninsured rate in the state; both groups tend to have higher-than-average incidences of diabetes and emergency room usage, making a diabetes registry and a population health management solution vital to controlling costs and improving clinical outcomes.

"Wellcentive's solution will help physician practices deliver coordinated, targeted care to their diabetic patients. It will also allow us to track whether we are managing patients successfully—from the individual to the community level," said Andrew Lombardo, executive director of RGV HIE. "This breadth of functionality was a key factor in our choice of Wellcentive. Physicians will have dashboards that help them prioritize and coordinate patient care, including alerts for patients who have not received recommended care.  UTHealth and our HIE will have the analytics and workflow tools we need to refine the program and identify problem areas that require more focus and resources."

RGV HIE's Wellcentive solution will initially incorporate data from major health systems in Cameron and Hidalgo counties and will then expand to include health information from federally qualified health systems and accountable care organizations (ACOs).

"With population health management tools to standardize best practices, prioritize care management efforts and close gaps in care, physician practices in the Rio Grande Valley will be able to continuously improve clinical and financial outcomes," said Tom Zajac, Wellcentive CEO. "We are proud to partner with RGV HIE and UTHealth in this important public health initiative."

The UTHealth and RGV HIE diabetes initiative is a Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment (DSRIP) project to demonstrate innovation in care delivery to Medicaid beneficiaries. Texas is one of several states piloting these Section 1115 Research & Demonstration Projects to improve Medicaid management and reward providers for improving the cost and quality of care. 

"The relative poverty of our region, combined with the high incidence of diabetes and other chronic conditions, creates an enormous social and economic burden," said Joseph McCormick, M.D., regional dean of the School of Public Health, Brownsville Regional Campus, and director of this initiative. "We must take measures to relieve this burden. The Wellcentive population health management solution is foundational for helping us achieve our mission—starting with our diabetes population and then expanding to other conditions like heart disease, obesity and chronic liver disease."

"Moreover, we are persuaded that this tool will help individual providers to spend more time talking to their patients by providing them with the key, timely information that they need, in a very efficient and usable format, with less time looking at computer screens and more time talking and counseling patients," added Dr. McCormick. "Wellcentive will also provide tools for patients and other members of the health team to provide better disease management."

About Wellcentive

Built from the ground up to help customers improve clinical, financial and human outcomes, Wellcentive's population health management technology is cloud-based, scalable, and customized to meet the needs of providers, health organizations and payers. Wellcentive's technology, insight and services help care teams measure and report performance and implement actionable workflow to drive value-based reimbursement and the transition from volume to value. Wellcentive has gained recognition as a leader in population health management in reports recently released by IDC Health, KLAS and Chilmark. Wellcentive aggregates data from more than 3,000 interfaces, and its solutions improve outcomes for over 30 million lives. Visit www.wellcentive.com; follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook; or call 877-213-8456 to learn more.

For more information:
Kristi Johnson
Wellcentive
678.710.2008
[email protected]

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SOURCE Wellcentive

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