Interoperability: A key player in the quest to reduce gaps in care

Moxe’s Director of Provider Engagement, Gaby Frazer, BSN, RN, is deeply invested in having honest conversations with health systems about what’s working well for them and what they wish could be different. 

A veteran leader in healthcare information technology, Frazer says no matter what clinical product she implements, she sees a common theme: Clinician involvement is key to success. 

“It is absolutely critical that for any kind of IT you’re rolling out, you stay in touch with the end users and understand what’s working and what’s not. No matter how well you design a tool or workflow, unless you know how clinicians are using it, you’re not going to make meaningful improvements,” Frazer says. 

As Frazer works with Moxe customers to understand their needs and wish lists, she brings that back to Moxe’s engineering team. “Feedback from providers helps us prioritize what changes need to be made,” she says.  

As Moxe thinks big about how big data can be used in healthcare, Frazer says interoperability will increasingly be a key player in the quest to reduce gaps in care. 

Defining interoperability 

Frazer says interoperability in healthcare is largely about bringing in meaningful data and reducing noise. 

“When physicians only have 15 minutes with a patient, bringing in more outside data isn’t always better. The value is in presenting meaningful data at the right place, data that can be used to improve patient care.  A big part of that is making sure that key items across platforms mean the same thing.  Vitals in one system, for example, means the same thing in another. Systems need to figure out how to speak the same language. Once we do that, it becomes a lot easier to show physicians meaningful things about the patient,” she says. 

The future of interoperability at Moxe

From the very start, Moxe has been meeting providers where they work, directly in the EHR. And now, we’re delivering actionable insights where they can be most helpful. 

Frazer says provider feedback she’s gathered tells her Moxe is successfully speaking the same language as providers. “We haven’t made it harder than it needs to be. Clinicians say the interface is intuitive,” she says. 

Perhaps what’s not as intuitive to clinicians, she says, is how Moxe’s insights directly contribute to care quality and reduce gaps in care.

“Initially, our bidirectional solution, Convergence, was largely used to provide clinicians with supporting evidence from payers (e.g., encounter data from specialists). Information from payers provides a more comprehensive view of a patient’s health history, which can be helpful as providers diagnose and treat patients. Notably, ensuring that the documentation on each patient is as accurate as possible is critical. This is conveyed through diagnosis coding, which drives revenue. If a patient is coded by a provider as having diabetes (and nothing else), for example, but that patient has diabetes with complications (e.g., depression), both the provider and the payer miss out on reimbursement dollars,” Frazer says.

During a recent conversation, a clinician acknowledged how Convergence contributes to cost savings, but questioned how it impacts care quality.

“We explained that accurate coding ensures you get paid appropriately for the care you are delivering patients. This is especially important when you're caring for a patient with multiple chronic conditions who doesn't have access to transportation. It's complex. If you're paid correctly, you have the resources to help more patients. Money that health systems save is money that can be invested into their patients,” she said. “The clinician who had raised the question quickly said, ‘I can get on board with that.’”

Beyond saving money, however, Frazer and her customer partners know that Convergence has the potential to deliver insights that can address gaps in care and improve care quality. “That’s what we’re driving towards,” Frazer says. 

“We hear from clinicians that Convergence alerts them to past diagnoses or problems that a patient forgot to mention or maybe just didn’t think was relevant. Some of that history does affect a provider’s treatment plan,” she says. 

“Patients today are so mobile. They can be seen in a variety of settings—a Minute Clinic one day, a hospital another, a primary care provider on another. Each of those settings may be on a different EHR. Convergence, importantly, shows providers data from patient encounters at locations across the spectrum,” Frazer says.

One way Frazer, a nurse who worked in both neonatology and pediatrics, wants to see Convergence used is to track medication compliance. 

“We want to know if patients are getting their prescriptions filled. We want to know that a patient with congestive heart failure who is supposed to be on a diuretic has not picked up their meds in the past month. That’s a red flag that lets the clinician know the patient is probably not doing well. We want that lack of adherance to raise a flag in their workflow so someone on the provider team can get the patient in and back on track,” she says. 

“We have the foundation in place to do some really exciting things with data,” Frazer says. 

Does achieving interoperability and digging into how big data can improve healthcare sound like something you’d like to contribute to? Check out our Careers page. 

About Gaby Frazer, BSN, RN

As Director of Provider Engagement for Moxe, Gaby communicates the needs of our customers with the rest of the Moxe team. Her background in neonatology and EHR adoption provides her a unique and important perspective that is critical to our clients’ success.