By Alex Carter, Business Development Executive, Lumeon

Lumeon enjoyed participating in the American Medical Group Association (AMGA) 2019 conference on March 27–30. Our first time exhibiting at this conference, there were plenty of opportunities to interact with healthcare executives and doctors. Many visitors told us they were glad to discover us, and had not been aware a company like Lumeon existed in the healthcare space.

Lumeon’s work garnered a lot of interest because we are positioned to help solve complicated healthcare problems in patient compliance and coordinated care using a single technology platform. Care coordination and patient treatment plans are becoming an increasing priority for healthcare systems. With organizations taking on financial risk through pay-for-performance programs, it’s more important than ever to synchronize care over disparate health systems and EMRs, especially for acute patients who need to adhere closely to treatment plans.

Many in healthcare are eager for forward movement on risk share agreements, which have been stagnant for the past two years. Meanwhile, healthcare has gotten much more expensive and workflows have not changed to accommodate these value-based approaches. As a result, accountable care organizations are dying on the vine.

With the price of healthcare increasing, healthcare providers face not only concerns about delivery of care but also about patient expectations and engagement. When people are paying more, they expect more outreach and proactive care from their healthcare providers. This emerging dynamic can be called “a consumerism challenge” — patients reimagining themselves as consumers, with providers recast as service vendors instead of caregivers.

Lumeon is positioned to help with that challenge as well, since our platform facilitates more patient-provider communication and greater patient engagement in care. It’s a function of our ability to automate activities across the entire care continuum as opposed to just a single element of a patient’s care or treatment journey.

The conference’s breakout sessions reflected an audience interest in systemic integration, care coordination, patient engagement, and smart use of technology and data. Conference attendees took in sessions on topics such as implementing new models of care, using physician engagement to bring down costs, and optimizing technologies for value-driven payment models. Other breakouts covered integration of health systems, reducing administrative burden through clinical delegation, using technology and physician governance to improve quality of care, and managing high-risk patients.

Keynote speakers also indicated a growing interest in transformation of health systems and how to manage that change. For example, Zubin Damania, M.D., founder of Turntable Health and clinical assistant professor of medicine at UNLV School of Medicine, presented his vision of “Health 3.0,” a new approach to healthcare that leverages evidence-based medicine to promote better care while allowing care teams to be flexible, dynamic, and creative in how they deliver care.

With so much discussion of how health systems can run more efficiently and engage both physicians and patients more successfully, it’s no surprise that the conference also brought business best practices into the conversation. Jenn Lim, co-founder, CEO, and Chief Happiness Officer of the consulting firm Delivering Happiness, presented a keynote about how a workplace’s culture of happiness can be a major competitive advantage.

Good technology used in a way that promotes efficient and effective care, empowers patients, and eases burdens on physicians can be a key piece of creating happy workplaces. The Lumeon team are avid believers in providing a secure foundation for care delivery, enabling cohesion and coordination that frees up providers to tap into the passion for healing that originally brought them to the field.