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LAS VEGAS — Technological innovation is used often in healthcare to improve patient outcomes, but when it comes to children, aggregating data at the individual and population level is critical, said Stephen Quirk, CEO of Youth Emergency Services and Shelter in Des Moines, Iowa, and Larry Seltzer, general manager and senior director of Netsmart, in a presentation at HIMSS16 on Wednesday. Quirk, no stranger to working with children with health and behavioral issues, said that Medicaid privatization prompted him to seek a partner to help modernize the provider’s electronic health records. In particular, he realized it wasn’t enough to diagnose and treat the immediate problem. Often, it was helpful to examine the circumstances of a child’s life — family dynamics, history of substance abuse, and other “social determinants” that can dictate how compliant a child is with his or her care plan. [Also: See photos from Day 3 of HIMSS16] In short, YESS needed better continuity of care. “You need to reach out to your provider partners to reign all of the data into one place,” said Seltzer, whose company has been working closely with YESS. “You need to be aware of gaps in care — understanding all of that knowledge and placing it in the hands of a care coordinator or social worker to get more engaged.” The goal, he said, is to exchange data in consistent and meaningful ways; lab data, immunization data and other information should all be sent to or shared with inpatient mental health centers, substance use centers, hospitals, primary care practices and any other entities that may be involved in a patient’s care. Information technology, he said, can be an advocate for the best health decisions for a child. Data aggregation is key, and Seltzer maintained there’s a significant return on that investment. According to a YESS study, 93 percent of respondents reported they felt better about themselves and their care plan, and 88 percent of the children studied reported better overall functioning. On top of that, Seltzer said there are cost savings achieved by moving youths out of detention centers and hospitals and into the care of private nonprofits like YESS. Since implementation of the data aggregation model, he said there’s been an increase in high school graduations and test scores, and a reduction in substance abuse and thoughts of suicide. “Anyone who has access to those records is privileged to be able to see all that information,” said Quirk. Twitter: @JELagasse This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

LAS VEGAS - The Staten Island Performing Provider System is running into all of the challenges inherent in implementing a value-based model for Medicaid payment reform in New York State. The Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment Program has as its goal to reduce avoidable hospital use by 25 percent over the next five years, according to Staten Island’s Executive Director Joseph Conte, speaking at HIMSS16 in Las Vegas. Asked how the program was going, Conte said, “In 11 months that’s the expectation to achieve. We’re not there yet. Looking at information we have from two hospitals, it’s a positive trend.” [Also: See photos from Day 2 of HIMSS16] Staten Island Performing Provider System is a corporation formed by Richmond University Medical Center and Staten Island University Hospital. Over 60 healthcare agencies and community-based organizations have joined Staten Island in the effort to reduce costs while increasing the quality of health for a very diverse population including 130,000 Medicaid recipients and 50,000 uninsured residents.  The big challenge, Conte said, is that timely data is not available from the state.  “It’s at least a six to nine month retrospective,” he said. “Everyone’s in a different place as far as electronic health records.” As of October 2015, an IT assessment showed that of the 26 healthcare systems partnering with Staten Island, 92 percent had an EHR platform or were in the process of getting one and 14 of them had different EHR vendors, Conte said. The overarching mission is to align IT strategy and execution, said Raj Lakhanpal, MD, CEO of SpectraMedix, and member of HIMSS Clinical and Business Intelligence Committee. To this end, Staten Island will be collecting data from providers and data feeds, and integrating it to create longitudinal records. They will apply population risk assessment models to predict high-risk patients and to flag those who should be included in disease registries and to identify gaps in care. [Also: See photos from Day 3 of HIMSS16] Conte said, “Data needs to be turned into business intelligence. Everyone needs prompt, accurate performance feedback.” The partners will need to make some IT investments to connect to state, Staten Island and other health IT platforms, he said. They’re starting to realize the value of receiving real-time measures of population health, he said. “Data six and nine months old is of zero interest to them,” Conte said. “What’s of interest to a doctor, (he or she) never knows that their patient is in the emergency room, or has been hospitalized.” Twitter: @SusanJMorse This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

LAS VEGAS – Secure, personalized clinical desktop technology vendor Aventura announced Wednesday at HIMSS16 that it is partnering with HealthCast to bring HealthCast’s single sign-on technology to Aventura’s clinical desktop offering. The combination enables basic level desktop perimeter security and two-factor authentication with the ability to leverage single sign-on and contextual patient awareness for interoperability at the point of care, Aventura said. Aventura’s so-called “situational awareness” platform, Sympatica, uses ambient knowledge of who a user is, her location and the patient in her care to authenticate and provide access to an electronic health records system. HealthCast’s SSO Connectors will be integrated into the Sympatica platform to deliver fast and secure access to an organization’s EHR and multiple clinical applications, the vendors announced. [Also: See photos from Day 3 of HIMSS16] “Our partnership with HealthCast includes a growing library of more than 325 SSO connectors,” said John Gobron, CEO of Aventura. “By pre-integrating with Sympatica, customers will have optionality in their security strategy, including the ability to leverage SSO without the complexity and costs commonly associated with other access solutions.” Aventura and HealthCast are exhibiting at the 2016 HIMSS Conference and Exhibition, Aventura in booth #1324 and HealthCast in booth #6054. Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

LAS VEGAS – Infection control technology vendor Seal Shield LLC has introduced at HIMSS16 its new ElectroClave UV-C Sanitizer and Mobile Device Management System. The vendor is demonstrating the technology in the HIMSS exhibit hall in booth #368. The ElectroClave is an enterprise mobile device management system that uses low-power UVC LED technology to disinfect hard-to-clean devices such as tablet computers and smartphones while charging, syncing and managing the devices via a custom RFID backbone. Each sanitizer can manage up to 12 devices at a time. [Also: See photos from Day 3 of HIMSS16] Tablet computers and smartphones can harbor harmful bacteria and viruses. A study published in the Journal of Applied Microbiology warns that 20 percent to 30 percent of viruses can be readily transferred from a fingertip to a glass surface, like that on a mobile device touchscreen. Today, hospitals use autoclaves to sterilize a wide variety of instruments. But numerous devices such as tablets, smartphones and other electronics cannot withstand the high heat of these sterilization systems, Seal Shield explained. The ElectroClave bridges the gap for IT professionals and infection control practitioners, using high-efficacy UV-C LED technology that has the advantages of low power and low heat, Seal Shield said. The vendor's Smart Clean technology enables what the company describes as "failsafe disinfection," adjusting UV exposure to bulb life and environmental conditions. These features allow electronic devices to be charged and synced while they disinfect, the vendor explained. The ElectroClave combines HEPA filtration and positive pressure with UVC LED technology to provide the most efficient means of combating cross-contamination bacteria, viruses and fungi on hard-to-clean devices, Seal Shield added. Built-in spectroscopic analyzers measure the change on the mobile device surface in order to ensure a clean and safe device for every user, the vendor said. Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

LAS VEGAS – TigerText Inc., a secure healthcare communications technology vendor, has announced at HIMSS16 partnerships with Salesforce and Box to launch care collaboration systems. The partnerships will enable streamlined communication across the continuum of care to decrease care delivery costs while improving outcomes, said TigerText, which is highlighting the new partnerships at its HIMSS16 exhibit hall booth (#425). TigerText is using its developer platform, dubbed TigerConnect, to enable the partnership integrations; the vendor also is expanding the suite of tools in Tiger Connect to inspire more healthcare developers to boost patient-centric care, the vendor said. “Healthcare is hungry for better communication tools that are embedded into existing workflows,” said Itamar Kandel, president of TigerText. “With TigerConnect, our partners can harness the power of secure messaging to address this need without the hassle, cost and delay of building it themselves.” [Also: See photos from Day 3 of HIMSS16] Salesforce Health Cloud customers soon will be able to embed the TigerText messaging service in their Health Cloud portals, enabling clinical staff to conduct HIPAA-compliant conversations for streamlined care coordination. And through a new integration with Box’s DICOM viewer, both TigerText and Box hospital users can share and collaborate on DICOM images via the TigerText mobile interface. On another front, in an effort to support innovative companies, TigerText has launched TigerConnect for Startups. The launch partners for this new initiative include Medisafe, WinguMD and AccountedCare. With more than 2.6 million users, Medisafe’s cloud-synced mHealth platform helps patients stay on top of their medications. Medisafe is collaborating with TigerConnect to research doctor utilization of patient-generated data to inform adherence, the vendors said. Also, working with TigerConnect, WinguMD, an enterprise mobile photography system, enables secure collaboration on visual findings for an entire care team. And AccountedCare’s PoC software, a mobile platform for value-based care providers, uses TigerConnect to deliver real-time notifications, tracking and reporting across the post-acute care continuum to help manage costs and quality for accountable care organizations. Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

Barely a year after announcing its ambitious plan to tie reimbursement to quality of care, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday that 30 percent of Medicare payments are now tied to alternative payment models, such as ACOs.  

(SPONSORED) We've been hearing about the major changes coming with the introduction of value-based care, yet statistics indicate that many organizations only have a toe in the water.

As more healthcare organizations begin adopting some form of a value-based payment model, only 3 percent of providers believe their organizations are highly prepared to make the pay-for-value transition, according to the new 2016 HIMSS Cost Accounting Survey.

Referral management technology vendor par8o Inc. has announced at HIMSS16 that it has expanded its relationship with WellHealth Quality Care, Nevada's first accountable care network.

West Healthcare has launched at HIMSS16 a communication system designed to automate patient engagement and extend investments in population health