Fierce Q&A: Aetna's ACO chief says tech a 'foundational requirement' of accountable care

Aetna is putting an emphasis on technology to support clinical integration, population health and patient services for its newly announced accountable care organization (ACO) partnership with New Jersey's Hunterdon Medical Center and its 225 affiliated doctors, Charles Kennedy (pictured), Aetna's CEO of accountable care solutions, tells FierceHealthPayer in an exclusive interview.

Plans include:

  • Health information exchange technology from Medicity, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Aetna, to enable secure, two-way exchange of health information across a patient's entire care team, including hospitals, physicians, labs, pharmacies and other ambulatory services.
  • Point-of-care clinical decision support services and the Active CareTeam desktop-based workflow tool to track, monitor, coordinate and report on patient health outcomes from ActiveHealth Management, also a subsidiary.
  • Reporting tools that will help Hunterdon Healthcare providers evaluate how they are performing against their targeted clinical and financial outcomes.

"Aetna believes technology is a foundational requirement for ACOs," Kennedy tells FierceHealthPayer. "Providers need to be able to exchange, analyze and act on patients' clinical and claim information at the population and individual levels. Since 2005, we have invested more than $2 billion to acquire or build a variety of capabilities to support and enable accountable care models."

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