Cloud Partnership to Improve Care Quality for Kidney Disease Patients

Nashville, Tennessee-based Evergreen Nephrology and Innovaccer Inc. announced a partnership to leverage the company’s Health Cloud platform to optimize care management and delivery at the value-based care organization.

According to the press release, Evergreen Nephrology will leverage Innovaccer’s solution suite to transform kidney care across its network of nephrology practices through enhanced analytics, care management, physician and patient engagement, and referral management.

“People living with kidney disease mostly interact with their nephrologist or a large dialysis company," said Gene Sawyer, CIO at Evergreen Nephrology, in the press release. "Now, with Evergreen, they can benefit from value-based arrangements and the additional wrap-around services that come with them. To do that, we needed a complete technology platform that can serve all constituents in the care continuum—with patients at the center—and that includes their nephrologist, dialysis provider, and the interdisciplinary teams supporting them; whether that's through social work interaction, behavioral health, dietary, or otherwise.”

The National Kidney Foundation indicates that the US spends over $130 billion annually on kidney disease, and the press release states that these costs could be reduced through the use of value-based care delivery and earlier nephrologist involvement in care.

“Innovaccer gives us the unique ability to enable this by pulling in data from all the touch points of a patient's care journey,” Sawyer stated. “The platform gathers the information, makes sense of it, and drives high-quality insights straight to the point-of-care. With this data at our fingertips, actions and interventions can be taken that improve outcomes, delay disease progression, shift care to the home, and accelerate kidney transplants when applicable."

Evergreen Nephrology’s mission is to improve the quality of life for people living with advanced stage chronic kidney disease and end-stage renal disease while reducing total costs of care. The press release notes that the partnership will allow the Evergreen to unify clinical, claims, utilization, and other data across EHRs and IT systems used across its network.

These data will be used to create longitudinal patient records, which will be used to identify and stratify patients who need intervention, drive digital outreach for engagement, streamline care management and coordination to improve care experience, reduce costs, and close care gaps at the point-of-care.

"Partnering with Innovaccer will help us improve kidney disease management while ensuring that the appropriate resources reach the individuals most in need," said Stanley Crittenden, CMO at Evergreen Nephrology. "We are excited to take our unique nephrologist-led value-based care programs to the next level with Innovaccer's best-in-class healthcare IT and achieve the best possible outcomes for people living with kidney disease."

Evergreen Nephrology is the latest care organization to tap Innovaccer’s cloud technology to advance care quality.

Earlier this month, Franciscan Health shared that it would use the Innovaccer Health Cloud’s Data Activation Platform to integrate patient records across its network and affiliated providers to advance the health system’s population health, value-based care, and patient experience strategies.

The health system will use Innovaccer’s platform to create unified patient records, which will enable Franciscan Health to identify indicators related to risk management and care quality. The partnership will also allow the health system to stratify patient populations based on risk, which could help improve its Medicare Risk Adjustment (RAF) and quality scores, reduce readmissions, and improve efficiency.