GeekWire Studios | Improving the Patient Experience: Unlocking Value-Based Care, sponsored by Opala

GeekWire Studios Virtual Event | Improving the Patient Experience: Unlocking Value-Based Care, sponsored by Opala.

Ken Chandler, CEO at Opala is joined by panelists Anna Taylor, AVP of Population Health at MultiCare Connected Care and Semira Singh, Director, Population Health Informatics, Providence to discuss how value-based care is finally being realized.

Currently, most healthcare providers get paid based on a fee-for-service model. Each time you go to your doctor’s office, your health insurance reimburses them for the cost of the treatment they provided you – whether it’s a vaccine, an office appointment, or lab work. The more treatment they provide, the more they get paid. The problem is that more treatment isn’t always better treatment. For many years, there has been a call for the industry to shift to a value-based care payment structure, whereby providers would be paid based on the quality of care delivered to patients rather than quantity.

Throughout this evolution to value-based care, one of the biggest challenges continues to be data fragmentation and a general lack of interoperability in the healthcare industry. Two key hurdles – data standardization and easy access to information – have caused interoperability progress to be slow. Without the ability to share information seamlessly on a timely basis, health plans and healthcare providers cannot effectively collaborate.

Opala, a leader in the health interoperability space, is working with health plans and healthcare providers to create the automated data pipelines to support the transition from fee-for-service to value-based care. As a member of the Da Vinci Project, an accelerator developing HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standards, Opala is putting real solutions in the market to overcome interoperability issues that ultimately are hampering the delivery of value-based care.