A common complaint among physicians is that they are inundated with a deluge of patient data. Oscar is looking to solve that problem by using analytics to distill data into useful clinical insights.
The five-year-old insurance company has taken its lumps over the past several years, including more than $200 million in losses in 2016, but the company is still betting on its data-driven approach to health coverage.
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The company’s new tool is designed to take all the patient data it collects and synthesize it into something that usable for physicians, according to a post by Oscar chief technology officer Alan Warren, M.D. The Clinical Dashboard aims to “connect the dots” of a patient’s health history and provide clinicians with a “holistic view” of each member’s current health status.
“This data isn’t just available—it’s contextual. A team of Oscar technologists created algorithms that parse through claims data, lab panels, and other relevant data feeds to generate alerts around likely health conditions, abnormal test results and red flags,” Warren wrote, noting that developers observed physicians daily to ensure the tool would fit “seamlessly into their workflow to add value.”
He added that the algorithms are built to improve over time as more data is fed into the system.
Oscar isn’t alone in its quest to provide analytics for providers. Humana Chief Medical Officer Roy Beveridge, M.D., recently told FierceHealthcare that he believes the insurer is “becoming more of a data analytics company than anything else.”
Throughout the industry, insurers and providers say the tension associated with fee-for-service payment models is starting to ease, prompting payer and provider to engage in data sharing partnerships focused on improving quality care.