Healthcare Leaders Attend Summit; Address Importance of Quality Improvement and Cost Containment

BOWIE, Md., Oct. 9, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- At its 2012 Customer Congress, Inovalon, Inc., a leading provider of data-driven healthcare solutions, brought together the industry's top experts currently working to improve the quality and delivery of healthcare. Participants at the three-day event discussed the opportunities and challenges our nation faces as we strive to embrace far-reaching technological innovation and navigate an increasingly complex healthcare landscape.

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More than 200 leaders from across the stakeholder community, including health plans, integrated healthcare delivery systems, academic institutions, physician associations, and pharmaceutical companies, gathered for the Customer Congress in Scottsdale, Arizona, to engage on the key issues facing the healthcare industry and strategies to improve quality of care, reduce costs in the system, and improve outcomes for patients. Sessions included a combination of educational break-outs, panel discussions, and keynote presentations.   

During her morning keynote, Margaret E. (Peggy) O'Kane, President and CEO of the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) addressed the issue of appropriately measuring the quality of care and how it can lead to better transparency and accountability. "It is part of our ethical responsibility to go after the waste in healthcare without harming the quality," said Ms. O'Kane. "The cost-quality tradeoff isn't real. We can do better and we can do better with less."

"There has been a real confusion in the policy community between cost shifting and cost containment," added Karen Ignagni, President and CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) during her address on the opportunities and challenges inherent in our new healthcare environment. "We have to move away from a fee-for-service system that doesn't respond to incentives.  The only incentive it responds to is doing more for more."

Elliott S. Fisher, M.D., M.P.H., Director for Population Health and Policy at the Dartmouth Institute, gave his perspective on the key role that health plans play in transforming how care is delivered, "You are bringing data to the problem and you're helping to develop the new payment models that I think are going to be key to fixing things." Fisher and Albert G. Mulley, M.D., M.P.P., Director of The Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science, led the Dartmouth Atlas Keynote Discussion "Shared Decision Making and the Practice Variation." As a part of his summation Mulley emphasized that "patient preferences supply the missing link in the chain of healthcare science that puts the triple aim in our sights."

The program also included a policy-focused panel entitled "Can We Really Bend the Cost Curve?" moderated by David D. Nash, M.D., M.B.A., Founding Dean of the Jefferson School of Population Health of Thomas Jefferson University. Panelists included: Leah Binder, M.A., M.G.A., President and CEO of The Leapfrog Group; Tracey Moorhead, President and CEO of the Care Continuum Alliance; L. Gregory Pawlson, M.D., M.P.H., FACP, Executive Director of Quality Innovations of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association; and Kenneth J. Sharigian, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Development and Integration at the American Medical Association.

"This is a critical time of transformation within the healthcare marketplace," said Keith Dunleavy, M.D., President and CEO of Inovalon. "We are proud and privileged to be playing a roll together with our colleagues and partnered clients.  The active exchange of ideas experienced throughout the Customer Congress will undoubtedly continue to catalyze progress addressing our toughest healthcare challenges."

Customer Congress attendees also participated in a number of educational sessions focused on: CMS Five-Star Quality Ratings, Risk Adjustment and Data Submission, HEDIS Measurement and Reporting, Chronic Care and Utilization Improvement, Commercial Health Insurance Exchanges (HIEs), Accountable Care organizations (ACOs) and Healthcare Data Insights.

About Inovalon, Inc.

Inovalon, Inc., is a healthcare technology company that combines advanced data analytics with highly targeted interventions to achieve meaningful impact in clinical outcomes and financial performance across the healthcare landscape. Our unique achievement of value is delivered through the effective progression of Turning Data into Insight, and Insight into Action^®. Proprietary datasets, sophisticated analytics, deep subject matter expertise and nationwide in-community personnel deliver a seamless, end-to-end platform of technology and operations. Driven by data, Inovalon uniquely identifies gaps in care, quality, data integrity, and financial performance ­— while also bringing to bear the resources to resolve them. This differentiating combination provides a powerful capability suite, touching more than 540,000 physicians, 220,000 clinical facilities, and more than 120 million Americans, driving high-value impact, improving the quality and economics for health plans, hospitals, physicians, patients, and researchers. Please visit www.inovalon.com for more information.

SOURCE Inovalon, Inc.