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What Threat or Opportunity Should Health IT Leaders be Keeping Their Eye On?

Healthcare IT Today — With how fast the world of healthcare is evolving, it is impossible to stay up to date on every single thing that is happening, especially once you factor in the amount of work that is required in every health IT job. There is no way that health IT leaders can be aware of every single threat or opportunity they need to keep an eye on, or at least there’s no way to do that if they try to do it alone. Thankfully, we are here to make sure that none of you are left to handle all that work by yourself. In order to get a good range of insights and opinions on what threats and opportunities health IT leaders should be looking out for, we reached out to our incredibly talented Healthcare IT Today Community while at ViVE 2024. The following video is a compilation of their answers!

Read the full article from Healthcare IT Today here

Veda Technology

Veda First to Achieve Third-Party Data Validation from Erdős Institute, Reinforcing Commitment to Accountable AI-Powered Solutions in Healthcare

Independent Audit Says Veda’s AI Precision Exceeds 90%, Solving Ghost Networks and Payer Network Attestation Challenges

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Overview

MAY 6, 2024 – MADISON, WI – Veda, a leading health technology company specializing in provider data solutions, announced today that it has achieved third-party validation from the prestigious Erdős Institute, an independent organization of university PhDs advancing the fields of Data Science and Machine Learning.

Following a blind independent review of Veda’s AI-powered data curation engine—the backbone of its product stack—Erdős Institute researchers found highly accurate provider directory data with certain accuracy scores exceeding 90 percent for critical information like addresses, locations, and phone numbers.

By facilitating accurate provider directory data, as mandated by the No Surprises Act, validation of Veda’s proprietary curation and machine learning methodologies represents a pivotal milestone in Veda’s journey towards fostering greater transparency and accountability in payer data solutions.

“As skepticism surrounds AI tools in healthcare, validation from the Erdős Institute underscores Veda’s commitment to leading the market with ethical and reliable solutions,” said Meghan Gaffney, Co-Founder and CEO of Veda. “While outdated methods for maintaining accuracy and compliance continue to fail, Veda is proof positive that automation is an effective and necessary approach to supporting health plan members who rely on provider directories to find care.”

A rigorous analysis by Erdős not only demonstrates Veda’s commitment to AI excellence but also sheds light on the prevalent issue of ‘ghost networks,’ or inaccurate provider directories. Yale Law and Policy Review found between forty-five and fifty-two percent of provider directory listings had errors, with some individual plans having error rates as high as ninety-eight percent.

Increased pressure on state and federal lawmakers to protect seniors from surprise medical bills and improve access to mental health treatment has spurred a wave of bipartisan legislation seeking to hold commercial and Medicare Advantage plans accountable.

In a crowded marketplace of payer solutions, the independent validation from Erdős sets a new benchmark for accuracy and compliance.

“Our blinded study found that Veda’s data-driven automation is capable of producing accurate provider data quickly and efficiently,” said Roman Holowinsky, PhD, Managing Director of the Erdős Institute. “Automated, real-time provider datasets like Veda’s can greatly benefit the market and save users a lot of time over manual attestation or intervention.”

To access a copy of the whitepaper, please visit vedadata.com/case-studies/erdos-white-paper-vedas-ai-precision-exceeds-90.

About Erdős Institute:

The Erdős Institute is a multi-university collaboration focused on helping PhDs get jobs they love at every stage of their career. Founded in 2017, the Institute helps train and place a diverse pool of PhDs through boot camps, workshops, mini-courses, consulting opportunities, and direct employer connections. For more information, visit www.erdosinstitute.org.

About Veda:Veda blends science and imagination to solve healthcare’s most complex data issues. Through human-in-the-loop Smart Automation, our solutions dramatically increase productivity, enable compliance and empower healthcare businesses to focus on delivering care. Veda is simple to use and requires no technical skills or drastic system changes, because we envision a future for healthcare where data isn’t a barrier—it’s an opportunity. To learn more about Veda, visit vedadata.com.

We promise accuracy, and we deliver.

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OVERVIEW

Why It Took Language Processing For AI To Go Mainstream

Scientists and technologists have been using AI for decades. We’ve used it to do complicated calculations and run algorithms and equations that we couldn’t previously conceive of. Your favorite streaming services have been using it for years to recommend shows and movies. But looking at media coverage of the past year, you’d think that AI was just developed. Why is mainstream AI language processing now taking off?

In late 2022, did AI experience an onslaught of media attention that made it seem like it was a new functionality? Why are legislators and regulators now racing to regulate something that has been in existence for about the same length of time as the color TV?

Learning To Learn

Tools powered by AI have essentially learned to learn. The language models we’re all seeing now train themselves with two primary algorithms. First, they can look at any sentence in any context and try to predict the next one.

The other way that language models try to learn is by guessing words in a sentence if some words are randomly removed. These are examples of implicit supervised training, and it’s made possible because these tools use the entire corpus of the internet as training data. This is the actual breakthrough.The other way that language models try to learn is by guessing words in a sentence if some words are randomly removed. These are examples of implicit supervised training, and it’s made possible because these tools use the entire corpus of the internet as training data. This is the actual breakthrough.

Read Chief Science & Technology Officier Dr. Bob Lindner’s entire article on Mainstream AI Language Processing.

Veda Technology

ViVE 2024 – Veda Media Mentions

Humana and Veda Press Coverage ViVE 2024

The Humana and Veda partnership was announced at the ViVE 2024 health tech conference. Here is what the media had to say. . .

This move bodes well for Humana as it spends a good chunk of time in calls to confirm provider data. Inaccurate and inconsistent data from provider directories will cause friction in the process of finding a provider, thereby increasing administrative work for providers, health plans and seniors.
-Nasdaq

Maintaining up-to-date provider directories, including accurate phone numbers, addresses and panel status of in-network practitioners, is critical to helping seniors make informed choices about their healthcare.
-Fierce Healthcare

Keeping provider directories up to date is often a massive undertaking for health plans and providers. In the past, Humana has had to make “millions of calls annually” to make sure its provider directory is accurate.
-MedCity News

Lawmakers have pressed insurers to improve their provider directories. In October, Sens. Thom Tillis, Ron Wyden and Michael Bennet introduced the Requiring Enhanced & Accurate Lists of (REAL) Health Providers Act, which would strengthen requirements for Medicare Advantage plans to maintain accurate directories.

Becker’s Payer Issues also cited an April 2023 study in JAMA Health Forum (which found physician information is often inconsistent across payer directories) to emphasize the challenges associated with provider data.
-Becker’s Payer Issues

Veda will use its automation technology to analyze, verify, and standardize Humana’s data, ensuring accurate provider data.
-Vator.tv.

The Humana and Veda partnership has come full circle after Veda got its start in a Humana hackathon back in 2016.
-Digital Health Wire

WATCH: Meghan Gaffney Shares Insights on HealthTech Industry

Interview by Dennis Dailey of HIT!Show at ViVE 2024. Watch to hear Meghan Gaffney insights on Healthtech industry trends.

“We’ve finally made the jump from AI as an idea to AI really moving the needle for plans and providers,” remarks Meghan Gaffney, Co-Founder and CEO of Veda, during our video interview at the event.

“At Veda, we like to say, ‘We build technology that helps people, help people,‘” Meghan continues, reflecting on her background in public policy and the company’s mission to tackle healthcare infrastructure challenges.

Meghan shares insights into Veda’s partnership with Humana, highlighting their efforts to enhance provider directory accuracy for Medicare Advantage members.

“The complexity is that there are six million healthcare providers… We really focus on using technology to make the entire exchange of information easy for both the provider and the payer,” she explains.

Discussing industry trends, Meghan emphasizes the significance of regulations like the Real Provider Act and their impact on ensuring patients’ access to accurate healthcare information. “There’s going to be an increased focus on making sure that every patient has access to the right information to get care,” she adds.

“We’re excited about being a part of that conversation and bringing AI into the mainstream,” Meghan concludes, expressing Veda’s commitment to advancing the potential of AI technology in healthcare.

See you next year at ViVE!

What Will It Take to Transform the Rural Healthcare Landscape?

HealthTech Magazine

The way for success in the rural healthcare landscape is to make it easy to find a doctor, to be a doctor and to pay a doctor,” said Bob Lindner during a ViVE 2024 education session on the challenging rural healthcare landscape. “All of these three things have challenges that can be traced back to the data.”
Bob Lindner Chief Science and Technology Officer at Veda Data Solutions

Many rural healthcare organizations are struggling due to current reimbursement models and lack of resources. This can have an impact on patients in rural areas, who often face challenges with care access.

Health IT leaders from different parts of the industry addressed these pain points and what needs to happen to keep rural healthcare organizations afloat.

Data Can Drive Change for Rural Healthcare

Lindner shared a story of an organization that wanted to know why it was so hard for patients to find appointments for addiction medication. He said it was important to analyze the data because the reason could have been that there were enough providers, but they were hard to find on a website; that there weren’t enough providers and the industry needs to recruit more; or that there were enough providers accepting patients, but they were scheduling them out so far, they might as well have been unavailable.

“You don’t want to jump to a conclusion and try to solve something without understanding what your actual problem is,” said Lindner.

Amy Gleason, chief product officer at Main Street Health, said that many rural healthcare organizations are using older electronic health record systems, and some are still using paper charts. Not having a robust EHR setup makes it difficult for these health systems or clinics to determine which patients have missed screenings or other trends in their patient population. Gleason pointed out that while health plans try to provide their own data to rural organizations, they may all do that in a different way with a different portal. Clinicians don’t have the time to log in to different portals or find out how to get into a spreadsheet — and often, their EHR can’t handle that influx of data anyway. Read the full article from HealthTech.

Connect with Dr. Bob Lindner on LinkedIn. Read more from Bob with Automation, Machine Learning, and the Universe: Q&A with Veda’s Chief Science and Technology Officer and Co-founder, Dr. Bob Lindner.

Humana Announces Strategic Partnership with Veda to Improve Accuracy of Provider Directories

Enhancements will help seniors get real-time access to local in-network providers

LOUISVILLE, KY and MADISON, WI (February 26, 2024) – Leading health and well-being company  Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) today announced a strategic partnership with Veda, a health technology company specializing in helping healthcare companies solve complex provider data challenges. Humana will partner with Veda to improve the accuracy of its provider information and ensure that seniors have real-time details about in-network providers, making it easier for them to access high-quality healthcare. 

Ensuring the accuracy of provider directories has been the source of ongoing challenges for seniors, health plans, providers and policymakers. Maintaining up-to-date provider directories, including accurate phone numbers, addresses and panel status of in-network practitioners, is critical to helping seniors make informed choices about their healthcare. While Humana historically was making millions of calls annually to confirm provider data, ongoing inconsistencies and inaccuracies in these directories can make it harder to find a provider and lead to administrative burden for seniors, providers, and health plans.  

ENHANCING EXPERIENCES WITH VEDA’S AUTOMATION TECHNOLOGY

Veda will use its patented automation technology to analyze, verify, and standardize Humana’s data to ensure it is accurate and comprehensive, along with real-time scoring of data quality. Veda’s platform achieves high data accuracy, ensuring quality across networks as measured by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Veda’s automation will allow Humana to devote more time and resources to enhance the patient experience.

“We want to be a partner with CMS and policymakers in improving the accuracy of provider directories. This collaboration with Veda will enhance not only the experience for our members, but also our provider community,” “We’re committed to delivering an exceptional experience for both, ultimately improving health outcomes and enhancing the overall well-being of our members.”
Robbie Tindall, Vice President, Provider Process Network Operations at Humana

“Accurate provider data is a key component of efficient health plan operations, care delivery, interoperability, and ultimately patient satisfaction,” said Veda co-founder and CEO Meghan Gaffney. “By addressing the challenges that members may face with finding in-network care providers, Humana is ensuring their members have access to the timely, high-quality care they deserve.”

In addition to working with Veda, Humana will continue to apply best practices in ensuring that provider directories are accurate and up-to-date. Humana has also long supported efforts to create a National Directory of Healthcare Providers and Services, and has provided feedback to CMS about how such a national effort can increase patient satisfaction.

View release on Humana’s website.

About Humana  

Humana Inc. is committed to putting health first – for our teammates, our customers, and our company. Through our Humana insurance services, and our CenterWell health care services, we make it easier for the millions of people we serve to achieve their best health – delivering the care and service they need, when they need it. These efforts are leading to a better quality of life for people with Medicare, Medicaid, families, individuals, military service personnel, and communities at large. Learn more about what we offer at Humana.com and at CenterWell.com.

About Veda

Veda blends science and imagination to solve healthcare’s most complex data issues. Through human-in-the-loop Smart Automation, our solutions dramatically increase productivity, enable compliance, and empower healthcare businesses to focus on delivering care. Veda’s platforms are simple to use and require no technical skills or drastic system changes because we envision a future for healthcare where data isn’t a barrier—it’s an opportunity. To learn more about Veda, follow us on LinkedIn.

Rural healthcare challenges: How bad data deepens disparities

In rural healthcare, timely access to crucial mental healthcare and other specialized services presents a significant challenge. Over the last decade, numerous rural hospitals have shuttered, with more at risk of closure due to staffing shortages, declining reimbursement rates, diminished patient volume, and challenges attracting talent. The answer to the challenges in rural healthcare is to get more data.

With very few options for specialty and subspecialty providers, rural patients often endure long journeys for necessary care. According to a Pew Research Center report, the average drive to a hospital in a rural community is approximately 17 minutes, nearly 65 percent longer than the average drive time in urban areas. Such systemic failures not only exacerbate disparities but also challenge the very foundation of patient care.

A functioning rural health system relies on legions of specialty care doctors conducting outreach visits across vast geographic areas. In principle, this approach presents an efficient means to provide rural patients with access to specialty care, eliminating the need for extensive travel to major urban centers. However, the persistence of inaccurate data poses a significant barrier to achieving comprehensive access to specialty care in rural regions.

Discover Bob Lindner’s take on how bad data exacerbates rural healthcare challenges and impacts patients on Chief Healthcare Executive.

5 Vital Lessons for Entrepreneurial Leaders: Strategic Breaks for Success

ENTREPRENEUR – Veda Data’s CEO and CO-Founder Meghan Gaffney talks valuable lessons for entrepreneurial leaders. These lessons include engaging with diverse entrepreneurs, promoting continuous learning, overcoming gender bias, the importance of big thinking, and remembering that leadership requires ongoing strategic thinking. Discover how taking time away enables entrepreneurs to rejuvenate and gain valuable insights that help improve leadership.

Like you, I have big goals for my company and know that getting lost in the minutiae won’t get me there. Taking time away for personal and professional development ensures you remember to look up.

As founders and leaders, if we just keep our heads down and focus solely on getting tasks done, we miss critical opportunities for big thinking. The kind of thinking that leads to growth and transformation. The kind of thinking that can impact the trajectory of a young company. And to be honest, the kind of thinking that is necessary of leaders and founders and those of us responsible for the vision of our companies. Here’s what I learned when I took the time to step away from the day-to-day.

1. Lessons from outside your industry are invaluable

As startups, we are often able to bring an important outside perspective to the industries we operate in. We’re disruptors who think differently and aren’t constrained by legacy norms that can slow down innovation.

But then we grow and there is a shift that happens. Instead of bringing the outside perspective, we sometimes find ourselves needing an outside perspective. That’s why it’s critical to spend time developing important relationships with peers outside of our sector.

Other innovators will look at a problem (and solution) with fresh eyes and help ground us in the innovator role we built our company on. We can learn from the experiences they’ve had, even if we serve different industries. Read the full article from Entrepreneur: 5 Vital Lessons for Entrepreneurial Leaders

Addressing Challenges in Rural Healthcare Data

HEALTHCARE BUSINESS TODAY — Specialty and subspecialty healthcare services are less likely to be available in rural areas and are less likely to include highly sophisticated or high-intensity care. This exacerbates problems for rural patients seeking specialized care who must travel significant distances for treatment.

It comes as no surprise a 2019 policy brief from the University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center found that 64% of surveyed rural health clinic staff members reported difficulties finding specialists for patient referral.

A functioning rural health system relies on legions of specialty care doctors doing outreach visits across a wide geography. In theory, that’s an effective way to ensure that rural patients have access to specialty care without traveling to a major metro area. But, bad data is keeping us from achieving complete access to specialty care in rural areas and experts across industries are weighing in on the issue.

Read Chief Science & Technology Officier Dr. Bob Lindner’s entire article addressing rural healthcare data challenges.

Progress in healthcare data quality

Health tech companies have attempted to solve provider data inaccuracy problems with a number of products, platforms, and integrations. No solutions have been able to offer members the ability to easily book an appointment armed with accurate information.

While many solutions focus on gathering all data sources available to identify providers, most don’t have the ability to effectively clean up those databases. That’s where we comes in. Veda is leading efforts to eradicate rural healthcare data challenges in the U.S. Discover how our technology connects patients to the critical care they need while ensuring that individuals are not burdened with unexpected healthcare costs.

Veda Technology

The most up-to-date, comprehensive, and accurate source of data. Your organization can access profiles of every active provider in the U.S.—over 3.5 million.

See how we’ve helped leading healthcare organizations achieve significant cost savings, improve data accuracy, and enhance patient care. Here, you will find our results, research, reports, and everything else our scientists are testing in the Veda Lab – no lab coat required.

Stay up-to-date on industry trends and discover a wealth of resources on provider data management, roster automation, and AI.

At Veda we understand that every data point is an opportunity to improve the healthcare experience. And we can see the potential when data is no longer a barrier.

Veda solutions

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Press

What Threat or Opportunity Should Health IT Leaders be Keeping Their Eye On?

Veda First to Achieve Third-Party Data Validation from Erdős Institute, Reinforcing Commitment to Accountable AI-Powered Solutions in Healthcare

Independent Audit Says Veda’s AI Precision Exceeds 90%, Solving Ghost Networks and Payer Network Attestation Challenges

We promise accuracy, and we deliver.

Why It Took Language Processing For AI To Go Mainstream

Learning To Learn

ViVE 2024 – Veda Media Mentions

WATCH: Meghan Gaffney Shares Insights on HealthTech Industry

What Will It Take to Transform the Rural Healthcare Landscape?

Data Can Drive Change for Rural Healthcare

Humana Announces Strategic Partnership with Veda to Improve Accuracy of Provider Directories

Enhancements will help seniors get real-time access to local in-network providers

ENHANCING EXPERIENCES WITH VEDA’S AUTOMATION TECHNOLOGY

About Humana

About Veda

Rural healthcare challenges: How bad data deepens disparities

5 Vital Lessons for Entrepreneurial Leaders: Strategic Breaks for Success

1. Lessons from outside your industry are invaluable

Addressing Challenges in Rural Healthcare Data

Progress in healthcare data quality

You know your business. We know data.

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DIRECTORY ANALYSIS

Resources & Insights

9 Questions Leaders Should Ask Themselves to Help End Employee Burnout

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Pulse 2.0 Interview With CEO & Co-Founder Meghan Gaffney About The Healthcare Innovation Company

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