How Cloud-Based EHRs Empower Providers in Value-Based Care Models

The healthcare system is shifting from the traditional fee-for-service model, where payment is based on volume of service, to Value-Based Care. The VBC models alter the incentives of providers radically, linking reimbursement to patient health results, quality of services, and cost-effectiveness.

This drastic change demands a new digital infrastructure that can facilitate collaboration, real-time analytics, and smooth data flow. In other words, Value-Based Care requires a new digital foundation, and the new foundation is the cloud-based EHR.

Why Value-Based Care Needs a New Digital Backbone

Old FFS Electronic Health Records were designed as a silo that is hard to integrate, especially traditional, on-premise EHRs. Their design forms data prisons that complicate information transfer between settings and the possibilities of offering real-time information on proactive care.

Cloud-based EHRs offer the architectural basis for outcomes-driven care. They provide the flexibility, connectivity, and potent analytics to succeed under the VBC programs, such as Accountable Care Organizations and bundled payments.

Role of Cloud-Based EHRs in Value-Based Care

Cloud-based EHR is a complete contrast to the legacy system. It is a subscription-based architecture that runs on a remote, secure internet server, eliminating the requirement of purchasing expensive on-premises hardware and IT personnel.

The essential needs of VBC programs are:

• Comprehensive Care Coordination: Giving care to a patient in every care context.
• Cost Efficiency: Finding and eradicating inefficient services.
• High Quality Measures (HEDIS/MIPS): Demonstrating the existence of evidence-based preventive care and chronic care delivery to patients.

The technology gap that is created by legacy systems, in most cases, makes it impossible to achieve these VBC goals by the provider. A cloud-based EHR is centralized and connected, and thus, bridging this gap, the transition between volume and value becomes seamless.

Strengths that Enhance the Speed of VBC Performance

1. Live Data Accessibility of Smarter Clinical Decisions

Cloud architecture enables real-time access to clinical and financial information for the whole care team, no matter where it is. This plays an important role in risk-based VBC programs where any delay in information transfer may result in care lapses, avoidable readmission, and financial punishments. A fuller, current patient record of the clinic, hospital, or even a home visit can be accessed by the provider.

2. Interoperability API-driven Data Exchange (HL7 and FHIR)

The real EHR interoperability of value-based care is the destruction of data silos among various systems, hospitals, and payment providers. 

Cloud-based EHR is developed around new API standards such as FHIR and HL7, allowing much more advanced and quicker exchange of data than older proprietary systems. Such cross-setting coordination is the foundation of the VBC, with the coordination of the primary care provider, specialist, and post-acute facility all working off the same shared care plan.

3. Integrated Analytics of Quality Measures and Risk Scoring

Performance data is the key to VBC success. Contemporary cloud EHR analytics have ceased to be the reporting tools and are integrated engines that produce predictive and actionable insights.

They automatically combine data to follow and report on complicated EHR in quality indicators such as controlling hypertension or managing diabetes.

They apply advanced algorithms to recognize and correct patient risk scores to enable practitioners to achieve proper management of high-risk population health management EHR cohorts and adequate reimbursement.

4. Automated Workflow and Fewer Administrators

The VBC models enhance documentation and reporting. EHRs based on clouds help fight provider burnout through workflow automation that:

• Enhance Quality Reporting: Automatically produce and report VBC quality measures to payers.
• Streamlined Care Management: Automatic warnings on care gaps (e.g., preventive screenings) and coordinated complicated care paths for chronic illness.

5. Multi-Specialty, Multi-Location Provider Networks: Scalability

The EHR of the providers must be able to scale easily as they consolidate or increase the number of covered lives in VBC contracts. 

The cloud EHR scalability capability employs the elastic cloud system to meet growth-expansion by adding new clinics, as well as onboarding thousands of new patients without the enormous upfront capital cost and IT overhead of using new on-premise servers.

Related: How to Leverage Cloud EHR for Accurate Quality Reporting in Value-Based Care

Cloud-Based EHR and Population Health Management

The core of VBC is Population Health Management, which aims at enhancing the health of the specified patient groups. This task is crucial to a cloud-based platform since it will form a single patient record by aggregating clinical, claims, and even social determinants of health data obtained from different sources. The holistic approach enables providers to:

• Discover and seal care lapses such as missed immunizations.
• Preemptively monitor and enhance chronic disease outcomes.
• Formulate focused preventive healthcare interventions among vulnerable groups of their citizens.

Improving Care Coordination at Both Ends

The costs of fragmented care in the VBC world are expensive. Healthcare solutions based on the cloud provide support to shared care plans and collaboration among providers by building one source of all patient information. 

Such a real-time collaboration minimizes the possibility of unnecessary tests, medication errors, and expensive readmissions, which directly improves the VBC performance scores of the provider.

Value-Based Care Financial Benefits to Providers

Although the quality benefits are of primary importance, the financial benefits of a cloud model are also substantial to the VBC participants:

Reduced IT Expenditures: Subscription models eliminate large capital investment spending on hardware, and overall IT overheads are lowered in comparison to on-premise systems.

Greater Shared Savings Potential: Providers will be able to achieve cost and quality targets to reap the maximum amount of shared savings on VBC contracts as a result of using better analytics and care coordination.

Reduced Penalties: The greater quality scores through better documentation and reporting accuracy will reduce potential penalties through initiatives such as MIPS.

Security, Architecture, and Zero-Trust

The most widespread misconception is that on-premises systems are secure. As a matter of fact, most healthcare organizations do not spend much on security compared to reputable cloud-based EHR vendors. They provide enterprise-level security, which complies with HIPAA, SOC 2, and so on.

• High-level encryption: Data encryption is ideally done in transit and at rest.
• Intrusion Detection: 24/7 security and threat detection.
• Zero-Trust Architecture: Verification of all users and devices that access the data is performed strictly, irrespective of location.

These steps cause a dedicated cloud environment to be a safer and more dependable place to store patient data than the legacy server room owned by the organization, which is usually under-resourced.

Vozo Cloud EHR for Healthcare Practices

If you are searching for the best EHR system for your healthcare practice, Vozo EHR can be your go-to choice.

Our comprehensive EHR solution lets you focus more on patient care while carrying all the burdens and simplifying it.

• Vozo Cloud EHR’s cost-effective cloud subscription benefits all levels of practice.
• Our feature-rich EHR helps you rectify mistakes efficiently and speed up the process.
• Vozo Specialty EHR resonates with specialty practice needs and requirements.
• Our expert technical team got you covered 24/7 if any needs arise.
• Our EHR System continues to scale as your healthcare practice grows to improve the user experience.

The Vozo Customized EHR solution benefits your healthcare practice by 

• Streamlining the administrative process
• Improving workflow efficiency
• Reducing proneness to errors
• Manages all the patients’ records in one place
• Offers greater efficiency and cost savings across the board.
• Our specialty-specific tools, like scheduling, patient portals, lab integration, cloud hosting, and more, meet the specific needs and requirements of your healthcare practice.

“Embrace Vozo EHR to Reduce Your Burdens and Enhance Patient Care”