While I have thoroughly enjoyed my retirement since it began in January, I’m also quite excited about being back at the helm here at MEDecision for a little while until we bring in someone for the CEO role on a permanent basis. Thankfully, my position on the company’s board of directors has enabled me to stay in close touch so I have never really been that far removed from our operations.

I’m very excited about the various initiatives we have undertaken in recent months to build momentum as we approach the post-reform healthcare era. We are very well positioned, perhaps much better than most, to serve as a strategic partner that can help health plans and partners manage these unpredictable times and capitalize on the opportunities that arise from the evolving reform environment.

For example, we have dedicated significant attention and resources toward updating our product portfolio – including the upcoming launch of Alineo 3.0, the latest version of our Alineo collaborative healthcare management platform.Nexalign iEXCHANGE 8.0, the latest version of our collaborative healthcare decision support service, is also forthcoming. Earlier this year we launched a significant new product, InFrame, our collaborative HIE service. With Nexalign and InFrame, we can offer a solution to meet reform mandates right now.

We have also been doing a lot of work on our strategy for developing solutions to support the patient-centered medical home and just a few weeks ago we announced a strategic alliance with NaviNet through which we will deliver our Clinical Summaries and advanced referral and authorization technology to hundreds of thousands of physicians, clinicians and caregivers enrolled in the NaviNet network. This, in addition to our partnership with Availity, offers a powerful opportunity for health plans to differentiate by seeking innovative ways to improve care coordination and manage costs.

I’m not sure yet whether I should be proud of, or cowed by, all the work that has gone into refining our products, services and approach since I left in December! Seriously, however, I believe strongly that MEDecision is in a terrific place and poised for even greater things going forward. I’m eager to get to work. This is truly an exciting time to be back in the business, even if it’s just for six months or so.

The widespread adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) throughout the healthcare system received another boost last week when the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced its final criteria for the meaningful use of EHRs within the incentive program established by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. After releasing preliminary meaningful use regulations back in January, the agency spent the past several months collecting the thoughts and opinions of anyone and everyone in healthcare who took the time to submit one. CMS has said these factored into the finished product quite heavily, so score one for transparency. 

The final meaningful use regulations haven’t diminished the EHR incentive program’s impact on health plans, and its effect on health reform remains the same. If anything, they offer more flexibility than those proposed in January, which should increase EHR adoption within the plan’s first few years. The bottom line is that greater usage of EHRs will get electronic medical data flowing throughout the system. We’ll see more integration and sharing of information among payers, providers and even patients, which is a major step in the path to reform. 

For us at MEDecision, adoption of the final meaningful use regs—and the subsequent proliferation of EHRs that it will enable—is certainly an exciting development. Anyone who has followed our company over the past two-plus decades knows that we believe strongly in the potential of EHRs and healthcare IT to bring real, sustainable change to the healthcare system, and most importantly, better care to improve the health and well being of the population. We have long trumpeted technology’s potential to maintain costs, improve outcomes and increase operational efficiencies, so it’s very energizing for us to see healthcare finally heading in that direction. 

The coming months and years may turn out to be among the most pivotal the system has ever seen, and we’re gearing up to play a significant role in the transformation. 

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Eric Demers is senior vice president of health and life science at MEDecision, a leading provider of collaborative healthcare management solutions. Learn more about MEDecision at www.MEDecision.com. Follow the company on Twitter at @MEDecision and on Facebook at www.MEDecision.com/Facebook. 

Please feel free to publish the above commentary in full or in part with attribution according to the Creative Common license.

Often called the last great taboo, the burden of mental illness on health and productivity in the United States and throughout the world has long been underestimated. 

One in 17 adult Americans suffers from a serious mental illness. Many of these people suffer from more than one disorder and substance abuse condition at any given time, placing a substantial burden on individuals, families, the healthcare system, the economy and government. 

Beyond the personal cost of these conditions, mental health and substance abuse result in lost employee productivity, increased medical expenditures, and other costs including those resulting from social services, law enforcement, judicial and penal activities. 

Tough trend, tough story—does recent legislation offer hope? Congress enacted the Peter Wellstone and Paul Domenici Mental Health Parity and Substance Abuse Equity Act into law in 2008. This new law amends the Mental Health Parity Act of 1996 to require that group health plans of 50 or more employees, that provide both med-surge and behavioral health benefits, do so equitably. 

This sets the stage for insurers to take a closer look at the holistic member view necessary for the best behavioral health and medical disease management. 

Members of the MEDecision Clinical Programs and Clinical Products teams conducted a really interesting webinar last week focused on member-centric behavioral healthcare management. The team reviewed immediate considerations for health plans as they prepare for the upcoming changes mandated by the Federal Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act. 

They discussed the legislation’s implications for health plans with a special look at how it’s going to impact behavioral health UM workflows. The webinar offered really good insight into the societal, economic and regulatory factors that are driving insurers to increase access, improve outcomes and control costs for mental health and substance abuse care; along with the relationship between medical and behavioral health and how it’s important for payers to balance both in order to maintain a more holistic view of members. 

There are definitely a lot of things for insurers to consider as behavioral health takes on greater significance for them, but the MEDecision group did an excellent job of making sense of it all. 

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Just read a great article by Lucas Mearian in Computerworld. Last year’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to digitize medical records over the next five years is motivating and mobilizing the entire industry in a way it hasn’t been before. We, as the health information technology industry, have a lot of work ahead of us but we are poised to play a considerable role in facilitating EHR adoption. Allowing the real-time exchange of actionable clinical data among all healthcare stakeholders — to put smart patient data in the hands of users where they want it, whenever they want it and to enable them to utilize it regardless of technical platform —plays a pivotal role in healthcare’s technological transformation.

The technologies and approaches built on a patient-aware philosophy will be the most successful. Patient-aware solutions are those that put the patient at the center of the healthcare universe. They provide all stakeholders with mutual access to actionable, real-time information from throughout the healthcare ecosystem to create a deeper, richer understanding of patients and patient populations. This enables high-value, high-quality interactions that can improve care, streamline operational and administrative efficiencies and reduce medical costs.

Understandably, showing meaningful use through EHR technology can be a bit intimidating. By working together through new and innovative partnerships and alliances, it really seems as if we as an industry can bring real improvements to the healthcare system, and still make President Obama’s goal of creating EHRs for all Americans by 2014 a very realistic one.