Man on the Street: An article series featuring Avnet solutions experts talking about the opportunities with Oracle Technology Stack in today's solutions market.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), established new Medicare and Medicaid incentives to stimulate critically needed investments in health information technology (Health IT). It established two key concepts: 1) the implementation of a certified HER; and, 2) meaningful use of IT to produce better patient outcomes. A $2 Billion fund was established for Health IT funding, providing the foundation and groundwork towards improving healthcare in the US.
In 2011, providers became eligible for federal funding to help them improve IT standards, contingent upon the attainment of benchmarks called meaningful-use standards. The standards, mandated by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus), are to be implemented in three phases and are expected to form the backbone of ACOs, a main building block of healthcare reform. However, with each phase, the challenges grow tougher — one reason policymakers count on health information exchanges (HIEs) and healthcare analytics to help with the transition.
There are three stages of meaningful use for EHR implementation:
• Stage 1: 2011 Capture/share data
• Stage 2: 2013 Advanced care processes with decision support (Note: New date is now 2014 for those that certify to Stage 1 in 2011.)
• Stage 3: 2015 Improved outcomes
The healthcare provider segment includes hospitals, IDNs, medical centers, physician clinics, health information exchanges and RHIOs. The US spends over $2.2 Trillion on healthcare each year, which is driving this initiative. The US government has appropriated $37B for Health IT initiatives. Of that $37B, $19B has been set aside for health information exchange (HIE/NHIN) enablement through meaningful use of electronic health records (E.H.R.).
Avnet is a recognized expert in developing and enabling resellers to provide Healthcare Solutions to the market. I recently sat down with Jim Bindon, Avnet’s director of Healthcare Solutions, to discuss the huge opportunities Avnet partners have to capture additional market share by delivering Avnet’s Oracle solutions for the healthcare market.
When you ask most people what comes to mind with the mention of the topic of “health care” the response often includes cost, their own personal physician and medical insurance. But there’s a lot more to healthcare than the interaction between patient and provider. Behind the scenes the healthcare CIO is managing hundreds of applications in a very complex IT environment with concerns around workflow, data management, virtualized environments and protecting patient information. This requires a very sophisticated and finely tuned infrastructure to keep things running smoothly.
Bindon oversees Avnet’s HealthPath® Solutions program, a cutting-edge and proven coordinated solution approach that enables partners to quickly enter, specialize and accelerate growth in the healthcare market while minimizing investment cost and risks. The program is designed to help Avnet partners capitalize on the fast-growing and ever-changing world of healthcare with software, hardware and services opportunities.
Healthcare has three major segments: providers, payers and life sciences. Avnet has significant revenue and investment in each, but the primary focus is on the provider side – the hospitals, physicians and clinics that actually take care of the patient from a clinical perspective. That’s not to say the other segments aren’t as important.
“There are significant opportunities in all three segments of healthcare…so we look at the trends and drivers in the industry and develop different solutions with our supplier community to bring to market, through our partners, those solutions that focus on the high-growth areas in healthcare,” explained Bindon.
A former hospital director of radiology experienced in the supply side of hospital management, with a background firmly rooted in technology, Bindon brings with him a wealth of knowledge in the healthcare world. He is able to see the big picture in the industry, which includes a shift towards the “accountable care organization” model – a partnership between the three segments of healthcare in relation to risk, reimbursement, how they treat and manage patients, and how they collaborate care.
“There are certain things that have to be done in order to get us there – things like implementing a certified electronic health record and providing HIE (health information exchange) in a secure environment,” Bindon explained. “Business Intelligence and Analytics need to be used to translate all of the data being collected into useful information for real time patient care, a single patient view using clinical and patient portals for patient history and physician collaboration, and, of course, a refresh or upgrade to the hospital infrastructure will probably be necessary.”
This convergence of the three segments brings with it great opportunity for on-point technology solutions that integrate functions crucial to each area. For example, governmental mandates requiring a conversion to the new classification of diseases, ICD-10, must be adhered to. Bindon pointed out this requires a major implementation for the provide/payer segments for coding and claims processing. And, in the life sciences segment, data must be warehoused, analyzed and dispensed in useful ways to clinicians for chronic disease management.
All that said, the biggest hurdle for providers implementing integrated solutions is cost, followed closely by the technical expertise required to install and maintain technology solutions. In response, Avnet, partnering with some of their legacy resellers – those who have health care experience from not just a hardware background, but also with implementation and installation – has created initiatives to help address these hurdles.
Avnet’s renewed focus is on a service portfolio including Oracle’s Healthcare Master Person Index, Health Information Gateway, Healthcare Transaction base, Healthcare Data Warehouse Foundation and Enterprise Healthcare Analytics.
Oracle is a key component of the medical industry. Thousands of healthcare organizations around the world rely on Oracle to help them increase clinical performance and integrate business processes across the entire healthcare continuum.
• More than 350 leading healthcare providers run Oracle Applications
• 10 of the top 12 Fortune Global 500 healthcare organizations run Oracle Applications
• 70 percent of the Multi-Hospital Systems in the US run Oracle technology
Oracle's Healthcare Provider Solutions deliver a powerful, comprehensive combination of technology and business applications. Oracle helps Avnet partners deliver the exact solution for the maximum optimization of their customers’ environment with the following solutions:
Oracle Health Information Gateway (HIG) leverages the CONNECT open source application and Oracle server virtualization to facilitate NHIN standards compliant, secure, health policy-based connectivity and health information exchange over the Internet.
Oracle Healthcare Master Person Index (OHMPI) uses rules-based probabilistic matching algorithms to resolve unique person identities and provides a single point of reference to information about a patient, clinician, payer, or other healthcare entity within a healthcare organization or health information exchange.
Oracle Healthcare Transaction Base (HTB) is a secure, multi-use clinical data repository that facilitates the normalization and aggregation of patient health information for secondary use such as, data staging, health information exchange and clinical document repository for storing and sharing clinical documents. It includes data integration via messaging, Application Programming Interface (API), or pre-defined web services, master person index integration, and an Enterprise Terminology Service for terminology normalization.
Oracle Healthcare Data Warehouse Foundation (HDWF) is a comprehensive and detailed data model, specifically engineered for healthcare provider enterprise data warehousing. It is the foundation of Oracle’s Enterprise Healthcare Analytics, an advanced analytics and performance management solution that provides detailed, holistic and integrated views of the healthcare provider enterprise. It integrates data from electronic medical records, clinical departmental systems, patient accounting, back office, research and various other source systems, to rapidly and cost-effectively unlock value from clinical and operational data.
Oracle Enterprise Healthcare Analytics (EHA) consists of two data analytics solutions:
Oracle Operating Room Analytics (ORA) provides comprehensive views of operating room functions to drive operating room productivity; enabling staff to make more informed business and medical decisions.
Oracle Healthcare Provider Supply Chain Analytics (HPSCA) allows healthcare organizations to measure supply chain performance and make more informed decisions that improve cost savings, operational efficiencies and outcomes for care delivery.
Bindon retains laser focus on the Oracle “technology stack” when it comes to healthcare solutions. For example, by running Oracle programs on Oracle hardware, many potential compatibility issues are immediately eradicated, resulting in smoother, more integrated performance and less implementation time. And, as the only company in the industry offering a total solution from training to support, and everything else in between, Avnet is positioned as the go-to distributor for resellers to partner with.
Avnet has worked hand-in-hand with their legacy resellers to help them attain certifications and other necessary tools, as well as providing resources geared to help those partners stand out in a saturated marketplace and sell these complex solutions.
“We needed to upgrade the skill set of our resellers, and refocus our mix into more services and software orientation,” Bindon said. “We are taking them up the technology stack to enable them to sell more complex solutions.”
Getting resellers up to speed and taking advantage of the resources Avnet has at its disposal is all geared to get ahead of the curve with coming trends in the healthcare industry, with the goal of selling increasingly complex healthcare solutions over the next two years.
Resellers have been jumping at the chance to expand their offerings, and the majority of partners in the program have completed their certifications, thus garnering them Tier One leads, Bindon said. The goal is to get them up and running 100 percent before expanding the program. That said, the program itself, directly in line with Avnet’s SolutionsPath Engagement Strategy, sets Avnet apart from the competition.
“Right now we’re almost 90 percent there – and we have a fully-executional model of engagement with the hospitals in that marketplace,” Bindon said. “We’ve built a very strong, end-to-end training and enablement program that the reseller can take advantage of including our University and Internship programs. Our focus is really around training the reseller to take advantage of more of the very high-growth areas you find in healthcare.”
Partners who are interested in this program should contact their Avnet Oracle ADM or the Oracle Health Care BDM, Mike Stevens.
Janine Mueller / Sr. Marketing Manager, Brand / 303-544-6621
Direct link: http://www.avnetadvantage.com/Oracle/#8774
Posted on February 21, 2012
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Meg Benjamin is a field marketing manager with the Oracle Solution team. Meg has extensive experience working one-to-one with Avnet's partners.
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