Did You Know that Anthem and Epic Are Launching a Data-Sharing Partnership? Hooray!
Anthem and Epic are collaborating on a bidirectional data exchange. I call it a health tech reacharound. Anyway, the new partnership will impact more than 14.7 million patients covered in Anthem-affiliated plans who see clinicians using Epic software.
Here’s the fun part where these partners follow a simple recipe when telling the press. The recipe is simple. Tell the doctors, the patients, and the media all the things they want to hear such as:
- It will streamline administrative process like prior authorizations
- It will give providers more real-time data on patient behaviors like medication adherence.
- Providers will also be notified of significant health events, such as when a patient is discharged, in an effort to improve follow-up care.
Who doesn’t love that? But we know it’s all bullshit. How many times have you heard these claims before and then nothing happens? But wait, there’s more:
The payer will be able to capture consumer information from the clinician, analyze it and develop insights it can then send back to a care team to inform treatment decisions. The heightened data sharing involves clinical data as well as admissions, discharge and transfer data from hospital stays.
The payer will inform treatment decisions? WTF? Can you imagine having to now wait until Anthem tells you what to do next with a patient? They are already doing some of that now with prior authorizations. How is this helpful?
Lastly, what are the chances all this patient and treatment data is being sold to third parties? Yeah, 100%. This is a scam.
Anyone who still thinks EMRs have ANYTHING to do with better patient care is clueless beyond belief.
Ditto,
I was so glad I was able to retire last July 1st from primary care medicine. I was one of the last that did office work, hospital work and took call. EHR killed that. I do not recommend primary care to any medical students whatsoever. Bust one’s gonads to specialize and not deal with the B.S. foisted upon the bottom of the
“medical poop pile” F.P. or straight I.M.
Incidentally, the practice I worked for (after I left) the docs finally voted for hospitalists to inundate the hospital so they wouldn’t have to deal with it. About time as before I left it was getting intolerable.
Wasn’t always that way but I’m glad I was able to practice in the “paper age” for a time where one could get a lot of work done with a minimum of fuss. Efffffff, computers/EHR.
Kurt