ICHOM 2023 | Insight takes on Barcelona

The ICHOM 2023 Conference took place in Barcelona this year and was the largest gathering on Value-Based Health Care (VBHC) worldwide. Attended by leading industry experts representing countries from all over the globe, it is safe to say that this conference was a big deal!

Insight had the honor of presenting abstracts from both our South African and Australian branches on our revolutionary digital tool called Voice of the Patient (VoP). VoP uses clinically validated questionnaires carefully selected by our in-house Quality Improvement team to measure either PREMs or PROMs. This data is then analyzed by our multidisciplinary teams of actuaries, data scientists, and healthcare professionals to produce user-friendly dashboards and reports for our clients to assist them in managing clinical and financial risks, improving healthcare outcomes, and entering into VBHC contracts with their stakeholders. Our largest deployment so far is in the Australian market where we are commissioned by 24 health insurers and would have surveyed over 100,000 members by the end of 2023.

Daniel Erasmus, CEO of Insight in Australia, presented their ability to overlay various data sources from different stakeholders on the same cohort of patients and interactions to produce novel patient and provider insights. This includes patient-reported data through the VoP platform, cost data, and other sources of healthcare utilization (including out-of-hospital services and the utilization history of patients), clinical data, risk stratification data, and hospital complications data. They can then construct detailed benchmarks and scoring metrics using AI and machine learning models at an individual hospital level. Combining all of this multifaceted data enables them to consider healthcare interactions from a more holistic perspective deployed via a comprehensive and interactive analysis platform.

The South African team’s presentation at ICHOM focused on PREMs data. Here, they looked at the potential of specific domains in the HCAHPS-inspired VoP survey that may contribute to a reduction in readmission rates in private hospitals in South Africa. Not surprisingly, they found the categories relating to “discharge information” and “communication about medication” to have an impact on readmission rates. Since readmission rates are an outcome measure that is extensively used by hospital groups and funders, we find a great deal of valuable information in our VoP data that informs areas linked to readmissions, whether it be conditions, geographical area, patient demographics, and so on.

VoP is just one of the many innovative tools by Insight that are assisting our clients to make effective use of the data they have and collect critical new data for system improvement. Innovative models such as VBHC contracting are slowly being adopted and implemented, but adding tools such as VoP enables greater confidence and progress towards incorporating outcomes in contracting.

Please contact NabeelaC@insight.co.za to learn more about how we can help you find innovative uses of your data and help you collect and incorporate new and critically important patient perspective data into your environment.