Siemens/MobileMD To Play In Accountable Care ArenaSiemens/MobileMD To Play In Accountable Care Arena

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Siemens has announced it will acquire MobileMD, a Yardley, Pa.-based vendor of health information exchanges, for an undisclosed amount. MobileMD's system is being used by 110 hospitals and more than 2,000 physician practices, according to the company.

Although many health information exchange (HIE) vendors tout their ability to connect all parts of a healthcare community, the hospital systems that purchase these tools tend to use them in private exchanges that connect only their own facilities and physicians. But some of MobileMD's customers, including South Jersey Healthcare and Eastern Connecticut Health Network, are using their HIE to link non-affiliated as well as affiliated providers in their areas.

Siemens chose MobileMD specifically because of this track record, said John Glaser, CEO of the company's health services business unit, in an interview with information Healthcare. The industry is moving toward bundled payments and pay for value, he noted. "As a result of that payment structure, providers are realizing that you have to exchange clinical data if you're going to take care of people over time across diverse healthcare settings.

"The care will not always be in the same organization; it could be in multiple organizations. For example, the average person over 65 sees eight different doctors in the course of a year, often spread across different practices and hospitals. Siemens realizes that its customers need this kind of exchange if they're to thrive in this new payment era."

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Siemens' purchase of MobileMD positions the hospital information system vendor to become a player in the emerging reimbursement environment. But before that can happen, Siemens must complete the development of its electronic health record (EHR) for ambulatory care—a process that it is about two-thirds done, Glaser said. Meanwhile, Siemens has a relationship with ambulatory-care EHR vendor NextGen.

Glaser disclosed that Siemens' new outpatient EHR will have unique features focused on care coordination and population health management. "We feel we're early in the next generation of ambulatory EHR, because the nature of ambulatory practice is going to be different in the future."

Although Siemens will pitch MobileMD to its own customers, the HIE vendor will continue to sell its product to healthcare systems that use non-Siemens applications; in fact, Glaser said, the majority of MobileMD's clients use other systems. He viewed the ability to exchange data among these disparate systems as an advantage.

"The reality is that most healthcare organizations will live in a heterogeneous environment because of their clinical relationships with hospitals and physician practices that they don't own, but with which they collaborate on patient care. So you need not have a core Siemens system to find this technology very attractive and very helpful," he noted.

South Jersey Healthcare (SJH), a two-hospital organization based in Vineland, N.J., has used MobileMD to knit together its own healthcare community, which includes many small, independent physician practices.

The system's private HIE connects SJH's Siemens acute-care system with six different ambulatory-care EHRs; five more will be connected to it soon. The HIE is being used for referrals and access to "face sheets," which are clinical summaries on individual patients. SJH is also working with Sage and NextGen to import standardized Continuity of Care Documents (CCDs) that contain key patient data, according to Thomas Pacek, senior vice president and CIO of SJH.

Speaking at the recent College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) CIO forum in San Antonio, Pacek said his healthcare system also is starting to use the HIE to exchange data with post-acute care providers. An interface has already been written to the application that SJH's home care agency uses, Pacek said. Soon, SJH also will be trading patient information with an outside long-term-care facility as well, he added.

In a Siemens press release, Pacek commented, "Connecting with our physician community is probably the single most important step needed to begin our journey toward providing accountable care and MobileMD fills that need. With MobileMD and Siemens, we can deploy cost-effective, standards-based technology to make information available in a timely manner for our community physicians. This becomes a tremendous value-add for South Jersey Healthcare."