Game On! HIMSS’ New Healthcare Business Community

In early 2010, HIMSS launched a new HIMSS G7 thought leadership and industry action platform that had a value proposition for the industry: bring seven stakeholder types together to advance the creation of our healthcare financial system. Many involved know there is a critical need that worsens every year, to foster greater efficiency both in terms of electronic transactions and workflow automation.

Since this time, the HIMSS G7, sponsored by Kaiser Permanente, Optum, LexisNexis and Sentry Data Systems, has launched into a “hyper-productive mode” with new project launches such as the ICD-10 PlayBook, and now, a new Healthcare Business Community within the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase.^TM This industry action effort promises to be just as successful as the ICD-10 PlayBook, which receives over 1,000 unique visitors every week.

Last week, the HIMSS G7 isolated three key “use cases” (technology presentations that demonstrate value) after a day-long program facilitated by the Vanderbilt Center for Better Health; including:

• Point of Care Transaction Processing: showing the latest technology that can be deployed to ease the growing “paint point” in cash collections for healthcare providers.
• “Electronic Payments Hub:” an industry-wide electronic payment processing platform that addresses a prominent “black hole” in today’s industry architecture. The “hub” demonstration will show movement of funds and data through payer, banking and provider systems, enabling payers, banks and providers to more quickly move the paper-chase out of healthcare.
• ICD-9-CM to ICD-10 Revenue Impact: a technological business chain (from clinical systems to financial systems) that shows what happens to the revenue cycle when a provider uses inappropriate mapping of ICD-10 codes – a key consideration by all providers today.

These use cases were designed by some 26, multi-stakeholder attendees at the HIMSS G7 meeting and represent key technology “loops” that are highly impactful to the industry and which will point the way for appropriate implementations of technology that address fiscal pressures in today’s healthcare business landscape.

What is your organization doing to manage electronic payments? Do you have examples to share of how these systems work?  Please share your comments here on the HIMSS Blog.