CARY, N.C., March 5, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- SAS and VirtualHealth are teaming up to help government agencies improve citizen health outcomes and rein in costs, while gaining a more holistic view of needs and supports. A new collaboration will bring together VirtualHealth's leading integrated care management platform with health analytics from SAS to support whole person care.

Whole person care recognizes that individuals, particularly those from more vulnerable populations, often have needs that touch multiple systems, such as hospitals, behavioral health, primary care, social services, transportation, and housing. Whole person care puts the patient at the center, engaging them and coordinating services to not only improve health outcomes, but more efficiently use resources and reduce costs. 

VirtualHealth, the leading SaaS platform for care management and population health, and SAS are incorporating SAS^® data management, visualization and advanced analytics capabilities such as artificial intelligence and machine learning into VirtualHealth's integrated care management platform. 

"Whole person care is about viewing people more holistically, and keeping them at the center of quality improvement efforts that cross systems of care," said Dr. Joshua Morgan, current National Director of Behavioral Health and Whole Person Care for SAS and former Chief of Behavioral Health Informatics for the San Bernardino County (CA) Department of Behavioral Health. "New and unexpected patterns and insights emerge when integrating data from systems that likely have never communicated with each other before."

SAS is already working with government customers to support a more complete and meaningful view of a person. For instance, an enterprise data warehouse and analytics solution allowed San Bernardino County to integrate behavioral health data sets, as well as other health and non-health data sets, to provide customized risk scoring and identify high utilizers of multiple systems.

In addition, Wake County, NC, worked with SAS to identify individuals with recurring interactions with costly county services. By better understanding the "familiar faces," Wake County can ensure they are proactively targeting programs, such as subsidized housing, to the appropriate at-risk individuals.

An integrated care management platform also promotes tighter collaboration between the provider and payer communities, helping to reduce costs and inefficiencies. Federal, state, and local government agencies are saddled with tremendous health care expenditures, spending nearly $1.5 trillion on health care in 2016. To help reduce costs, more public health agencies are looking at a value-based health care delivery model in which providers, including hospitals and physicians, are paid based on patient health outcomes. Under value-based care agreements, providers are rewarded for helping patients improve their health, reduce the effects and incidence of chronic disease, and live healthier lives in an evidence-based way.

Analytics and integrated care management have the power to transform public health, creating a healthier population at a lower cost. This solution can also identify more robust and holistic outcomes that could become a part of new value-based care agreements.

"SAS continues to explore innovative collaborations within the changing health care market," said Jeremy Racine, SAS Health Care Strategy Consultant. "Combining with health technology leaders like VirtualHealth could create never-before-seen enhancements to the care delivery process."

Attendees of HIMSS, the industry's largest health information and technology conference, can check out a demo of SAS in a VirtualHealth environment at SAS Booth 7807 or VirtualHealth Booth 11543, March 5-9 in Las Vegas.

SAS in health care

With 40 years working with public and private health data, SAS has supported health care efforts in more than 145 countries, many US federal agencies, and 40 state health and human service agencies. SAS helps government agencies in areas ranging from population health to value-based purchasing support to epidemiology. In the commercial health care space, all of the top 25 commercial health plans and pharmaceutical companies depend on SAS for strategic insights into health outcomes, profitability, and customer preferences and behaviors that produce useful intelligence for business transformation and growth.

About VirtualHealth

VirtualHealth is the first comprehensive platform purpose-built for integrated value-based care and is deployed by some of the most innovative plans in the country for the management of millions of members. Winner of the 2017 Frost & Sullivan Product Leadership Award, VirtualHealth delivers to payer and provider organizations the integrated capabilities needed to achieve a 360-degree patient view, driving the outcomes improvements and cost reductions required in today's value-based care environment. The platform streamlines person-centered care/case and disease management and drives appropriate resource utilization through interdisciplinary collaborative workflows, broad spectrum interoperability, patient engagement, and configurable analytics and reporting. VirtualHealth empowers healthcare organizations to achieve enhanced outcomes while maximizing efficiency, improving transparency, and lowering costs. For more information, please visit www.VirtualHealth.com.

About SAS

SAS is the leader in analytics. Through innovative software and services, SAS empowers and inspires customers around the world to transform data into intelligence. SAS gives you THE POWER TO KNOW^®.

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