We often discuss how value-based care helps providers understand their cost to delivering care, but it is equally important and exciting to understand how value-based health care has radically transformed the health care IT space for the better. As health care providers and organizations are incentivized to deliver higher quality care at a lower cost through initiatives such as BPCI Advanced, it has become increasingly important for health care IT platforms to directly respond to both the clinical and budgetary needs of providers when delivering care. Avant-garde Health has been an early innovator in the space, providing clients with a user-friendly platform that provides a variety of departments across hospitals with the different types of data that they value, from providing finance departments with the total cost of supplies for a case to providing clinicians insight into important clinical outcomes, such as length of stay.

The transformation of health care to a value-based model of care has allowed for the rise of smaller, more agile health care IT platforms that can respond to niche needs introduced by alternative payment and care delivery models. As noted in a new Healthcare Informatics article, while large electronic health record (EHR) systems have attempted to address the unique IT needs introduced by value-based health care, much of the innovation in the space (and new excitement in the realm of mergers and acquisitions) has come from new startups in the arena. Unlike larger EHR companies, which are often slow to make changes and keep up with the rapid pace of innovation in the value-based health care space, smaller startups are adept enough to respond directly to the customer’s needs. Similarly, as meaningful use of EHR platforms becomes further ingrained into Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) requirements, smaller health care IT companies can serve to strengthen interoperability between monolithic EHR systems, both aiding with and adding to the capabilities of technology in the health care space.

As an early leader in the value-based health care IT space, Avant-garde Health is a strong example of how innovation can occur in the rapidly changing health care IT space. Responding to the needs of clinicians, hospital executives, finance departments, and supply procurers, Avant-garde Health gives providers ready access to patient-level clinical information, while providing hospital executives and finance departments with total dollar figures of the total cost to deliver care, spanning the gambit of needs in a value-based world. As innovation becomes increasingly important to address the market, we are also constantly listening to our customers to make needed updates to our offerings that provide value for the end user (see an example of recent updates in this blog post). We are excited to continue growing in the space, and look forward to better understanding how we can meet your health care IT needs in an ever-evolving value-based space.