Independent Practice Data Acquisition For Practice Managers. v1.0

Transcription

1 Independent Practice Data Acquisition For Practice Managers v1.0

2 Overview One of the initiatives of clinically integrated networks is to improve the quality and efficiency of care delivered to the patient population it serves. In order for organizations to demonstrate clinical integration, they must measure performance with quality indicators for the organization and for individual physicians. To accomplish this, your network needs to collect and aggregate data to support its health information technology platform. Your network has partnered with Valence Health to collect data from all providers in the clinically integrated network, provide the health information technology platform, and to provide quality reporting. Valence Health will work directly with the practices on data collection. This document provides you with an overview of the process. Independent Practice Data Acquisition s Practice Scheduling Your network s provider relations team will contact each independent physician practice participating in your network to set up an appointment for data acquisition. Prior to the appointment, Valence Health will determine the best method for collecting your data based on the Practice Management ( PM ) and/or EMR system in place. The appointment will be scheduled at a time that is convenient for the practice, including before or after business hours. The appointment should be scheduled with someone in the practice who has administrative rights, is familiar with the practice s computers, and understands the set-up of the billing and/or electronic medical record ( EMR ). The appointment will take place over the phone and will require ten to thirty minutes with your practice contact and thirty to forty-five minutes by the Valence Health technician with your practice s computer; you do not need to remain on the line for the entire appointment. The PM system will remain fully functional on the other computers in your practice during the appointment. Data Acquisition Appointment At the time of the scheduled appointment, the Valence Health technician will call the practice, and provide instructions to go to an Internet site where the technician will be able to see and control the practice s office desktop or server. The technician may ask the staff person about their computer set-up and file folders. Once the technician has the necessary information, he/she will begin set-up of Valence s data collection software, vmine. vmine is Valence s software application that collects data on an automated basis from most practice management systems. vmine is read-only and fully HIPAA compliant and does not require patient consent. (NOTE: If your PM system is not compatible with vmine, the Valence Health technician will discuss other options available for data collection.) Once the Valence Health technician is ready to install vmine, the practice staff contact may either stay on the line, or hang up the phone. Valence Health will continue with the installation process. As part of the process, Valence Health will obtain a billing file history on all patients in the practice for up to two years. Collecting data for all patients is a requirement of clinical integration, and the historical information will help to build a picture of care over time. After the historical file has been obtained, the technician will set up vmine to run automatically at a frequency set by your network (typically weekly). The technician will inquire about the best day/time for that to occur. When vmine runs, it will collect updated information from the billing system on all patients in the practice, create a secure, encrypted Independent Practice Data Acquisition v1.0 1

3 file, and send it to Valence Health via a secure http connection. See below for a list of data elements collected. Once the historical data has been obtained, and vmine is set-up to run going forward, the Valence Health technician will disconnect the Internet session with the practice. At that time, Valence Health will no longer have access to your system. Data Quality Review and Subsequent Contacts After the Valence Health technician successfully establishes a data feed with a practice, the Valence Health team will review the quality of data found in the system. If there is an issue with the data collection or vmine, the practice will be contacted and another appointment will need to be scheduled. Example Data Elements Collected from the Billing System Service Elements Patient Demographics Provider/Practice Elements Diagnosis Codes Patient Address 1 Practice Name Place of Service Patient City Practice Tax ID Procedure Codes Patient Date of Birth Provider First Name Procedure Modifiers Patient Death Date Provider Last Name Service Date Patient Death Flag Patient First Name Patient Last Name Patient Middle Initial Patient Phone Number Patient Sex Patient SSN (if present) Patient State Patient Zip Code National Payor ID Provider NPI (National Provider Identifier) Independent Practice Data Acquisition v1.0 2

4 Independent Practice Data Acquisition Process Flow Key Valence Valence/ contacts practice & schedules appt. Repeat process for remaining practices Data acquisition appt. Assistance Needed? Data Validated? Successful appt? Data quality review Independent Practice Data Acquisition v1.0 3

5 vmine FAQs Q: What is vmine? A: vmine is a proprietary application developed by Valence Health in order to automatically transfer files securely from a folder on a practice s computer back to Valence Health. Q: How much disk space is required for vmine installation? A: vmine is 4-8MB in size, depending on version. Q: How is vmine installed? A: We connect using remote access software, WebEx, and install vmine from an msi package. Q: How long does the installation take? A: Most installs can be completed in less than 60 minutes. Though you re welcome to stay on the phone with us as we conduct the installation, we only require enough of your time to establish the WebEx connection (under 5 minutes). Q: Where can vmine be installed? A: vmine has to be installed on a Windows computer networked to the folder containing files to transfer. Q: Is there any system downtime? A: Will a reboot be required?, there is no downtime involved and no reboot is required. We do require exclusive access to the host computer for the duration of the installation. Q: How does vmine communicate with Valence? A: vmine communicates with Valence servers via web services, receiving instruction on what to extract and from where. Q: How does vmine function? A: vmine is run by a service. The service checks in with Valence every 5 minutes by default to see if vmine needs to do anything. We call this check-in, the vmine heartbeat. The heartbeat schedule can be changed from the configuration file. If it s time for vmine to extract, the service kicks off the vmine executable. Q: When does vmine run and how does it know when it s time? A: By default, vmine is scheduled to run at a specific time. The service gets this information from a date/time parameter in Valence s vmine database, which can be set to a different date/time if preferred. When vmine finishes the current month s data pull and transfer successfully, this parameter is updated based on the intended interval. Q: How does vmine know where to find the files? A: During installation, a Valence technician will determine where the data resides, and will configure the program to watch the folder/tables of interest. Q: Is the data sent to Valence securely? A: When a new file in the folder is found, vmine compresses and encrypts it using 256-bit AES encryption before sending it back to Valence. The file is broken into chunks and sent via port 80, allowing vmine to bypass firewall configurations where FTP is blocked. Q: Will vmine pull all patients or patients from specific payors related to the CI network? A: vmine will extract all patient data to support a complete population management solution. vmine will not selectively pull patients based on payor. Independent Practice Data Acquisition v1.0 4