BATON ROUGE, La.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Amedisys, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMED) today announced that Julie Lewis, vice president of health policy for Amedisys has been selected to participate in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Innovation Advisors Program.
The initiative, launched by the CMS Innovation Center in October 2011, will help health professionals deepen skills that will drive improvements to patient care and reduce costs.
Lewis is one of 73 individuals from 27 States and the District of Columbia participating in the Innovation Advisors Program. After an initial orientation phase, Innovation Advisors will work with the CMS Innovation Center to test new models of care delivery in their own organizations and communities. They will also create partnerships to find new ideas that work and share them regionally and across the United States.
Funding for this initiative was made possible by the Affordable Care Act.
“There has been an incredible groundswell of interest in becoming an Innovation Advisor. It’s clear that doctors, hospitals and health care providers are enthusiastic about implementing the Affordable Care Act and strengthening our health care system,” said CMS Acting Administrator Marilyn Tavenner.
“Amedisys is dedicated to finding new models of healthcare delivery at home that result in higher quality care for Americans at a more manageable cost,” said William F. Borne, chairman and chief operating officer for Amedisys. “We are proud of Julie Lewis being selected to be a part of the initiative and look forward to providing key resources, including clinical talent, across Amedisys to support the project,” he concluded.
The 73 individuals were selected from 920 applications through a competitive process, and include clinicians, allied health professionals, health administrators and others. By attending in-person meetings as well as remote sessions to expand their skills and applying what they learn, the Advisors will be able to deepen their knowledge in health care economics and finance, population health, systems analysis and operations research.
“We’re looking to these Innovation Advisors to be our partners—we want them to discover and generate new ideas that will work and help us bring them to every corner of the United States,” said CMS Innovation Center Director Rick Gilfillan, M.D.
Among other duties, the Advisors will be expected to support the Innovation Center in testing new models of care delivery, to form partnerships with local organizations to drive delivery system reform, and to improve their own health systems so their communities will have better health and better care at a lower cost.
Amedisys will receive a stipend of up to $20,000. The stipend will be used to support Lewis’s activities while serving as an Innovation Advisor.
More information about the Innovation Advisors Program, including a fact sheet and a list of participants and their affiliated organizations, can be found at: http://innovations.cms.gov/initiatives/innovation-advisors/index.html.
About Amedisys:
Amedisys, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMED) is a leading health care company focused on bringing home the continuum of care. Amedisys delivers personalized health care services to patients and their families in the comfort of patients' homes, with approximately 10 million patient care and education encounters per year. Amedisys has two divisions, home health care and hospice. The Company's state-of-the-art advanced chronic care management programs and leading-edge technology enables it to deliver quality care based upon the latest evidence-based best practices. Amedisys is a recognized innovator, being one of the first in the industry to equip its clinicians with point-of-care laptop technology and referring physicians with an internet portal that enables real-time coordination of patient care seamlessly. Amedisys also has the industry's first-ever nationwide Care Transitions program. Amedisys Care Transitions is designed to reduce unnecessary hospital readmissions through patient and caregiver health coaching and care coordination, which starts in the hospital and continues throughout completion of the patient's home health plan of care. For more information about the Company, please visit: http://www.amedisys.com.
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