Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Expanding health care and process improvement into Latin America http://ping.fm/esgjD

No World Borders Expands Health Care, Process Improvement Practice to Latin America

Newport Beach, CA - No World Borders today announced that it has expanded its health care and process improvement practices to Latin America, with projects under way in Mexico, Puerto Rico, with teams available for new market opportunities in Panama, and Uruguay.

Michael Arrigo, President & CEO of No World Borders said, "The world continues to become more global and borderless in terms of the need to align business and information technology. Latin American companies in the health care insurance business need bilingual English-Spanish speakers who understand process improvement, claims adjudication, electronic health records, claims systems, and the new HIPAA EDI standards X12 5010 and ICD-10. Recently, our partners and customers have turned to us, our team and our relationships to help reduce cost and risk in their business as they seek to become more efficient and paperless."

Renato Escobar, with Latin American services for No World Borders in Miami Florida added, "Our company brings multi-cultural, bilingual skills to emerging markets in health care and other industries. The U.S. has long been a model for health care best practices and process improvement. We are excited about our new offerings in this dynamic, high growth market place, and our innovative approach timed well for new business opportunities there."

To follow other company updates:
www.twitter.com/marrigo on Twitter, or go to the company blog at noworldborders.blogspot.com

For Press inquiries, please email
press@noworldborders.com

For more about No World Borders go to
www.noworldborders.com

CONTACT INFORMATION

Public Relations
No World Borders
Email No World Borders
949-335-5580

Monday, June 29, 2009

No World Borders expands #health #process practice to #latin america with bilingual experts

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Where is the Integrity in Business Today?

Our advisor David Girling recently published an article in Mortgage Technology and we are providing the text here.

"When I was a teenager and I was driving with my father one afternoon, I got annoyed and finally said, “Dad, can’t you go faster than 55 MPH so that everyone else isn’t passing us?” My father, who was an officer and pilot in the U.S. Air Force and who routinely flew at the speed of sound turned to me and said matter-of-factly, “No son.” I asked why and he said, “Because I’m driving at the speed limit and that’s the law.”

On another occasion, I asked my father about the word integrity. He told me that integrity is something that you start to build early on in life, it takes a lifetime to build and integrity is difficult to re-establish once it is compromised. Throughout my life I’ve respected my father for his adherence to a strict moral and ethical code of conduct, and I have tried to live by his examples. Over time I’ve learned from him that integrity is doing the right thing even if nobody is watching.

So what has happened to integrity in our society today, especially throughout the ranks of our business leaders? I am appalled at the behavior of many senior level executives and disappointed that few have exhibited the moral fiber to do what is right rather than what benefits them financially. I have witnessed numerous instances of low professional integrity over the past few years where countless executives have made decisions that are not only unsound, but that benefit them financially at the cost of countless others. It seems that the Greatest Generation has been replaced by a greedy and unscrupulous one.

As a result, our country is now suffering through difficult economic times. Real estate values have plummeted and the credit markets are crippled. It seems everyone wants to blame it on subprime originators. However there are many participants that need to share in the blame. The ratings agencies contributed to the problem when they did not properly assess the risk of the securities they were rating. Originators relaxed lending standards to a point that as we know today were absurd are also responsible. And finally there were some appraisers and appraisal companies which seemed to “rubber stamp” values for lenders, a practice which also contributed to the housing crisis we have today.

All of those that participated in the excesses of the past few years are currently going through the tedious process of rebuilding their professional integrity. And there is much rebuilding that needs to takes place. With respect to the appraisal industry, I recently co-founded a valuation services company with other appraisal veterans called Quality Valuation Services, in an effort to promote greater integrity within the appraisal community. I have observed that most appraisers are hard-working and morally sound professionals. However, all appraisers have been tainted by those few appraisers that compromised their integrity by not adhering to accepted appraisal standards.

The recently introduced Home Valuation Code of Conduct, while an attempt to address some of the causes of the financial meltdown and to re-introduce integrity into the process, has also made an appraiser’s job even more challenging. The HVCC correctly advocates for greater independence, but it is having effects on the appraisal community that were unanticipated. QVS is well positioned to assist the appraisal community during these difficult times and to assist in the rebuilding process.

So how do we re-establish a higher moral and ethical code of conduct, and a greater level of integrity throughout all business segments? Ethical leaders that are “fed up” with the way business is currently conducted need to step forward. They can help fill the moral void that now exists within not only the appraisal industry but in all industry sectors. And the appraisal community needs to focus on delivering quality appraisals, by adhering to HVCC and by maintaining the highest level of integrity in the way appraisals are conducted. If all of us adhere to strict moral principles we will regain the professional integrity that has been diminished in past years.

At QVS we are trying to make a difference by actively participating in the solution. With integrity comes a responsibility to lead by example in our community. Integrity requires accountability and accountability requires active participation in the solution. As a result, QVS will donate a portion of the fees received from every appraisal that flows through our technology platform to a variety of charities, which include the following: Habitat for Humanity, Fisher House and National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.

I invite all valuation management companies and other industry leaders to join us by either donating to our charities or by giving to others that are in need, especially those that have been impacted by the current economic downturn. In isolation our efforts are small, but together we can take huge strides and make a difference. By helping those in need we can set good examples for others who are navigating their moral compass. Together we can make a difference, not just by automating, but by giving back, too."

David Girling is an advisor to No World Borders, and the CEO for Quality Valuation Services. Founded in 2008, QVS is a provider of nationwide real estate valuation services for the financial services industry. The company provides appraisal management services for the residential mortgage industry. Prior to QVS, he was the President and CEO of LogicEase Solutions (ComplianceEase), a provider of compliance and risk management solutions for the financial services industry.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Economists see end to US downturn http://ping.fm/u7xIv

Monday, June 15, 2009

IBM approach to implementing ICD-10, X12 5010 for health care payers

While at the America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) health care reform conference held in June 2009 in San Diego Ms. Barbara Archbold, Partner, Payer Industry for IBM Global Business Services is interviewed by Mike Arrigo, CEO of No World Borders.

Ms. Archbold recommends that health insurance payers approach the issue from a business point of view, start planning now for the new medical coding standard ICD-10, that they create a strategy and approach to reduce risk and cost for modernizing legacy systems by "touching these systems only once."




insurance co's need to speed adoption of health info exchange http://ping.fm/9jc8K

The Health Care Payer Role in HIEs

Health Data Management had an interesting article in the June 2009 issue on the payer role in HIEs. The core philosophy of health information exchanges (HIEs) is to bring together industry stakeholders to facilitate the appropriate sharing of patient data throughout a community, region or state. Several steps need to be taken to create widespread movement by the health plans to support heath information exchange. These include better "as is, to be" process improvement, an open dialogue between payers and providers by skilled facilitators, and a skilled team of subject matter experts at payers who understand ICD-10, X12 5010, and the impact on and modernization of the claims systems and adjudication process.

From Health Data Management, "...But while HIEs have worked for years to get established, a major stakeholder - health insurers - remains absent or a marginal player in many initiatives. Some health plans still are waiting for a viable business model that will justify a major investment in HIE initiatives. Others, particularly national payers, don't have a large market share of covered members in many of the regions that have an HIE. These payers and even regional insurers also often can't get involved in HIEs if their employer clients aren't sold on the idea of data exchange."

A small number of payers, however, are knee-deep into HIE initiatives. Chattanooga-based Shared Health, serving all of Tennessee, launched its HIE using claims data from two major insurers to provide physicians with a basic summary of care. Moreover, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts spent $50 million to wire up physicians with EHRs in three towns and get HIEs established there. "We have answered questions that these systems can scale and how to implement them," says Steven Fox, vice president of provider network management at the Blues plan. "We view it as a worthy investment and successful."

The HIE is a fundamental component of Obama's plan to make health care more efficient and affordable.

Obama's to AMA - med malpractice limits, choice http://ping.fm/orhS9

Barack Obama’s address to the annual meeting of the American Medical Association

,,

President Barack Obama’s address to the 158th annual meeting of the American Medical Association today attempted to assure doctors and their patients that his prescription for overhauling the health care system would be good for them. Obama cited the need for doctors to cut health care costs by reducing the number of unnecessary tests and procedures that are performed to reduce the risk of malpractice claims. Such reductions might require restrictions on malpractice liability to protect doctors.

". . .The first thing we need to do is protect what’s working in our health care system. Let me repeat – if you like your health care, the only thing reform will mean is your health care will cost less. If anyone says otherwise, they are either trying to mislead you or don’t have their facts straight.

If you don’t like your health coverage or don’t have any insurance, you will have a chance to take part in what we’re calling a Health Insurance Exchange. This Exchange will allow you to one-stop shop for a health care plan, compare benefits and prices, and choose a plan that’s best for you and your family – just as federal employees can do, from a postal worker to a Member of Congress. You will have your choice of a number of plans that offer a few different packages, but every plan would offer an affordable, basic package. And one of these options needs to be a public option that will give people a broader range of choices and inject competition into the health care market so that force waste out of the system and keep the insurance companies honest."

President Obama said that limits on medical malpractice lawsuits could be a necessary part of overhauling the nation's ailing health care system.

"I'm not advocating caps on malpractice awards, which I personally believe can be unfair to people who've been wrongfully harmed, but I do think we need to explore a range of ideas about how to put patient safety first, how to let doctors focus on practicing medicine, how to encourage broader use of evidence-based guidelines," he said


Thursday, June 11, 2009

Obama's Health Care Town Hall

The President’s health care town hall, context and opening remarks: “fix what’s broken, build on what works” appears here: http://bit.ly/YDfay

The President just concluded a town hall at Southwest High School in Green Bay, Wisconsin, with a focus on one of the President’s top priorities for his entire presidency.

Over the past two weeks, the President has
spelled out his vision for health care reform, met with key Members of Congress, and dedicated his Weekly Address to discussing the urgency of getting reform done and the unprecedented coalition that has formed to support that goal.


Wednesday, June 10, 2009

HIT Policy and Standards Committees Commence Work on National Health Information Infrastructure HITSP

HIT Policy and Standards Committees Commence Work on National Health Information Infrastructure HITSP (Health Information Technology Standards) updated to the National eHealth Collaborative in early June 2009. Here are a few highlights:

HITSP has moved rapidly to focus on meaningful use and ARRA's 8 priorities:
1. Encourage technology that protects the privacy of health information
2. Nationwide health information technology infrastructure
3. Utilization of a certified electronic record for each person in the US by 2014
4. Technologies that support accounting of disclosures made by a covered entity
5. Electronic records to improve quality
6. Technologies that enable identifiable health information to be rendered unusable/unreadable
7. Demographic data collection : race, ethnicity, primary language, and gender
8. Technologies that address the needs of children and other vulnerable populations

HITSP has embraced a service-oriented architecture, which enables reuse of capabilities instead of requiring new value cases for each novel requirement. Initial services include:
• Issue Ambulatory Prescriptions
• Query for Medication History
• Communication of Structured Documents
• Communication of Unstructured Documents
• Clinical Referral Request
• Retrieval of Medical Knowledge
• Return Laboratory Results Message
• Communication of Laboratory Reports
• Communication of Imaging Information
• Quality Measures for Hospital based Quality Information Collection and Reporting
• Quality Measures for Clinician Quality Information Collection and Reporting
• Immunization Registry Update
• Immunization Registry Query
• Communication of Immunization Documents
• Vaccine and Drug Inventory Reporting
• Public Health Case Reporting
• Emergency Common Alerting
• Send and Receive Relevant BioSurveillance Data
• Communicate Resource Utilization
• Exchange Administrative Benefits/Eligibility Transactions
• Exchange Administrative Referral/Authorization Transactions
• Provider Directory

HITSP is moving to an electronic publication approach for all its implementation guidance.

HITSP has embraced USHIK as a repository for its harmonized standards and code sets

The July 15 deliverables will directly support the needs of the HIT Standards Committee and its workgroups to identify standards, implementation guidance, and certification criteria in support of meaningful use.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Interview with TriZetto's Rob Scavo (AHIP)

While at the America's Health Insurance Plans conference in San Diego (AHIP) we met with Rob Scavo, President of Product Management and Core Administrative Solutions at TriZetto.

We asked Rob to provide TriZetto's view on what the new HIPAA standards, X12 5010 and medical coding standard ICD-10 mean in terms of not only compliance but opportunities to innovate and improve operations for both payors and providers.

Click play below to view the interview.

EDI Watch (AHIP) - Fraud detection system for health care

While at the America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) conference in San Diego, we interviewed Carl Scarabelli from EDI Watch. The company's solution promises to reduce a huge problem for health insurance companies, estimated according to EDI Watch at 10% of the total cost of health care in the U.S. The company's solution is easy to get up and running, with a quick ROI for health plans, according to Scarabelli.

Click play below to watch the interview.


Market for EMRs pegged at $1.6 billion by 2013

Market for EMRs pegged at $1.6 billion by 2013 http://ping.fm/WrpmS

NEW YORK – The market for electronic medical record data transfer equipment and applications, valued at $575 million in 2008, is forecast to reach $1.6 billion in 2013, according to a study by research firm Kalorama Information.

Driven by the growing use of EMRs in hospitals and physician offices, this segment of the patient monitoring market will grow 23.3 percent annually through 2013, notes the report, "High-Tech Patient Monitoring Systems Markets (Remote and Wireless Systems, Data Processing, EMR Data Transfer)."

Increased use of EMRs and high-tech patient monitoring systems is a key piece of President Barack Obama's plan to fix the ailing healthcare system, the report notes, because they have the potential to improve patient outcomes and satisfaction, provide cost savings and more efficient use of healthcare resources and reduce hospitalizations.

HCI addresses fraud, other health care cost issues - AHIP

While at the San Diego AHIP conference we interviewed HCI Insight, a company that promises to reduce the cost of health care by addressing fraud. HCI's loss calculators indicate that a health insurance firm with 3,000,000 (3 million) lives insured stands to lose $381 million over a specified period of time, and their solution is designed to address this issue, according to HCI executives.

We'll post our video interview in an update to this blog later today.

Protests outside AHIP Conference, San Diego

Today while entering the AHIP conference we encountered demonstrators who want the health care industry to change. We intereviewed Kathy Rallings, an employe at California Techers Association. The people *inside* the conference were a bit more subdued in their approach, but we believe that both the demonstrators and those exhibiting inside the conference are interested in improving health care. See our blog and twitter enteries (www.twitter.com/marrigo) for a balance of perspectives from both groups.

Click the play button below to view this video.

AHIP Day One - Passion in the Streets


Fresh blog from the floor of AHIP San Diego.  AHIP (America's Health Insurance Plans) is having their annual meeting in San Diego this week.   Here is a recap of June 3, 2009 the first day.

Last year at AHIP, health care reform was discussed, but most political commentators didn't think much would happen: there was interest, but not passion.  This year the passion has spilled onto the streets.

January 2009, the OMB made a statement that has remained at the center of where we are today- we cannot fix the economy unless we fix health care.

Of the significant debt we are now assuming with the new budget- $35 trillion of that debt is Medicare. We can't fix the economy if we don't fix health care.

One vendor’s health care reform includes four components developed sequentially. First is establishing a solid health information technology structure that we don't have today. Second is focusing more intently on comparative effectiveness and evidence-based service delivery, third is coordinating care, and fourth is consumerism. All of these components are being discussed.  Will we have time execute sequentially as opposed to combining these into a parallel path? The group estimated that this would take six to ten years to put the model in place, but do we have the time?

At a completely different end of the spectrum, there are also protests being organized, to show the angst developing in the industry.   Nurses from the  California Nurses Association and allies from groups like Physicians for a National Health Program and Progressive Democrats of America will be there to greet health plan executives.  Their tone is extremely hostile in some cases, calling the insurance industry some surprisingly caustic names.

Our view: HIPAA standards promise to improve health care, but we cannot wait.  Embracing the standard, technology, people and process must proceed briskly.  This is a challenge as member premiums have declined with unemployment ranks rising.   Click here four our recent update: mentoring health payers and providers on how to embrace HIPAA standards and improve process.

The exhibit hall is smaller this year given budget constraints.  However, we will spend more time there on day two.