IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--NextGen Healthcare, Inc. (NASDAQ:NXGN), a leading provider of ambulatory-focused technology solutions, today announced the members of CHC Strategies, Inc. are delivering cutting edge medical care to more than 53 counties and nearly 107,000 patients (roughly 18% of all patients served by Missouri’s community health centers) using NextGen Population Health™. CHC Strategies has a unique business model which has enabled Community Health Centers (CHCs) to pool resources and better control their future as the healthcare industry speeds toward value-based payments.
Formed in 2017, CHC Strategies is a clinically-integrated network of three independent Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) serving the most rural towns in Missouri. It includes Northeast Missouri Health Council — a four-time consecutive National Quality Award winner, Community Health Center of Central Missouri and Jordan Valley Community Health Center, which won the National Quality Award in 2019. Individually, these entities are among the top performing healthcare centers in the state in terms of quality.
By pooling resources including staff, hardware and data, CHC Strategies serves as a hub that enables its member CHCs to assume upside and downside risk with multiple payers within Medicaid. Each CHC has its own NextGen Population Health instance which runs on its own database. CHC Strategies has enhanced database access to aggregate the data from all three CHCs and create a more holistic picture of the larger rural population’s health, costs and outcomes.
“When we say we own our own data at the CHC level, we mean just that. Many of the analytic tools available in the industry claim health providers will own their own data when, in fact the vendor owns it and you’re beholden to their software,” said CHC Strategies Andy Grimm, CEO of Northeast Missouri Health Council. “The beauty of NextGen Population Health is that it's infinitely scalable and we retain clinical and local control.”
The members of CHC Strategies first committed their own resources and invested their own money to form their alliance. Their first goal was to get an aggregate view of the data with one central access point. In just 18 months, they have improved staffing, aligned workflows with best practices, integrated three Medicaid payors, and expect to sign their first at-risk contract with a managed care company within the next 30 days.
“When zip code is a better predictor of health than genetic code, it’s imperative for providers to keep a close eye on their rural populations,” said NextGen Healthcare’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Betty Rabinowitz. “And as value-based payments become more prevalent, understanding the interactions among cost and quality is also important. CHC Strategies has mastered both with the help of the NextGen Population Health platform.”
CHC Strategies frequently uses the geospatial capabilities of NextGen Population Health to identify children with care gaps who live in geographically isolated areas. By cross-referencing rural schools and zip codes, they provide mobile medical and dental services to the hardest to reach and most in need.
Access to high-quality health care is a key component in supporting a healthy community, and is one of the reasons that rural hospitals, rural clinics and CHCs are instrumental to the overall well-being of rural communities. NextGen Population Health helps these providers manage care by enabling them to understand cost, manage staffing outcomes and most importantly, analyze claims data. The goal is to best understand upside and downside risk to make better and more informed decisions for patient care.
Learn more about NextGen Population Health. https://www.nextgen.com/how-we-help/population-health
About NextGen Healthcare, Inc.
We empower the transformation of ambulatory care—partnering with medical, behavioral and dental providers in their journey to value-based care to make healthcare better for everyone. We go beyond EHR and PM. Our integrated solutions help increase clinical productivity, enrich the patient experience, and ensure healthy financial outcomes. We believe in better. Learn more at nextgen.com, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.
