Tracking system could cut costs

• By TED GRIGGS
• Advocate business writer
• Published: May 23, 2008 - Page: 1D - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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A couple of simple steps, such as creating an online diabetes tracking system that reminds doctors and patients when an exam or test is needed, could cut health-care costs by millions of dollars for the state and employers.

The registry was just one of the cost-cutting ideas discussed Thursday at the Louisiana Business Group on Health’s CEO Summit for Health Care Solutions.

The idea behind the summit was to get chief executive officers and other executives to ask themselves three questions, said Butch Passman, president of the business group. How can they participate in health-care reform? How can they support the business group’s 10-point plan for reform? How can they help?

“If you leave here thinking anything else, we’ve failed you,” Passman said.

Bill Borne, chief executive officer of Amedisys Inc., headed the group’s effort to come up with a reform plan. The plan calls for online prescribing as the standard of practice by 2010; portable, uniform personal health records by 2011; and performance measurement and full transparency for groups and facilities by 2010 and by individual practices by 2012.

Borne said “tech lite” solutions such as the patient tracker could be easily implemented without being overly intrusive for physicians or requiring legislative action.

For example, Colorado-based RMD Networks already has a secure, Web-based solution that does not require physicians to purchase and install software.

Steve Adams, RMD president and chief executive officer, said the health tracker helps prevent complications that are common, and expensive, to diabetic patients.

The average person with a chronic disease sees six physicians a year, Adams said. The collaboration, if there is any, among those providers is fractured and accomplished mainly through voice-mail messages.

RMD’s collaborative care software helps providers coordinate care and avoid the duplication of services, such as repeating tests, Adams said. The company is doing a pilot project with 30,000 patients in Colorado.

Dr. Don Storey, who headed Aetna’s high-performance network project, said employers need to remember they are the buyers of health care, and they exercise considerable power.

“In any other part of your business, you tell the seller what you want. They don’t tell you what they will sell you,” Storey said.

Employers can demand more of their insurers, he said. Aetna’s high-performance network came about because large employers in the Seattle area, told the insurer they were tired of the increases in health plan costs. Aetna, with the help of Virginia Mason, a 400-doctor, 5,000-employee health provider, and large employers began examining ways to improve value.