US healthcare Systems Article Review Feb 22nd 2012 Sowmya Parthasarathy

Title: AMA and AT&T Combine Care Management Platforms to Improve Collaboration among Caregivers Nationwide - AT&T to acquire AMA's online physician portal Source: http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/news/news/2012-02-21-ama-att-combine-caremanagement-platforms.page This article is a step towards the US Healthcare Reform mandate on improving access, lowering costs, evidence based medicine through a seamless connection enabled by electronic health records. This strategic alliance will help connect physicians, providers (hospitals and labs), payers, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and patients via a common network. Some questions to answer as we go through these changes and implement an electronic future for the healthcare industry would be to assess the needs of various stakeholders. The article says that it will connect physicians nationwide. How big is the AT&T healthcare IT and the AMA network? Will it connect physicians from different specialties? Specialties such as oncology, neurology and mental disorders have special needs. Can we include patient support programs managed by patient advocacy groups, pharmaceutical companies and other associations in this network? How is this aligned with the mandate to convert of ICD-9 to ICD -10 codes by 2013? Can we call for an RFP from all organizations who are considering building such a portal enabling input from all to include best practices, business rules and requirements? The two companies are huge but we need to take into consideration the requirements from various stakeholders. There is more than a dozen IT systems out there each independently functioningHow will the new AT&T-AMA system communicate with all other systems out there? Fedex is able to track its shipment at any time anywhere all the time. Can we learn and utilize their systems for keeping track of patients. Where did they go? Who gave them what and when? Where are they now? And who is taking care of them now? What else do they need?

Title: AMA and AT&T Combine Care Management Platforms to Improve Collaboration among Caregivers Nationwide - AT&T to acquire AMA's online physician portal
For immediate release: Feb. 21, 2012 Strategic Alliance Helps Thousands of Physicians Modernize Practices Chicago and Dallas In a union of two iconic American brands, the American Medical Association (AMA) and AT&T* have formed a strategic alliance that will enable hundreds of thousands of physicians, physician organizations and medical societies nationwide to connect and collaborate with hospitals, payers and patients to help enhance patient care and reduce costs. The organizations will integrate AMA's AMAGINE physician community portal for physicians with AT&T Healthcare Community Online, creating an advanced collaborative care and Healthcare Information Exchange (HIE) platform. By combining the platforms, both powered by Covisint, physicians will have more tools at their fingertips to modernize the management of their practices. AMA and AT&T will advance the adoption of health information technology (health IT) across the healthcare ecosystem by enabling customers that use the platforms physicians, hospitals, payers and patients to access health IT applications and exchange highly-secure clinical and administrative data. The alliance will create one seamless solution that will enable highly-secure, virtually anywhere, anytime access to advanced applications, aggregated clinical information and data analytics that enable the coordination and management of patient care and population health. The relationship will expand the functions and capabilities of the AMAGINE physician community portal that was created to help physicians easily integrate health IT into the management of their practices through a single source with affordable choices. AT&T Healthcare Community Online provides the foundation for a fully clinically integrated system across the entire care team and helps improve collaboration, reduce paperwork and potential errors, and ultimately improve the quality of patient care. Together, the combined platform will: Increase caregiver collaboration by connecting AMAGINE customers with AT&T Healthcare Community Online customers Provide access to AT&T's patient care and clinical integration solutions that help bring evidencebased information to the point of care Enable access to important applications such as clinical decision support, e-prescribing, care management and electronic medical records Improve workflow efficiency and streamline processes associated with physician orders and referrals, lab orders and results, medications and discharge planning Help physicians to take further advantage of "meaningful use incentives

"This alliance with AT&T makes the combined product offering that much stronger and more beneficial to physicians, said Robert Musacchio, Senior Vice President of Business Operations for the American Medical Association. "With the AMA's extensive knowledge of physician and patient needs, and AT&T's proven track record delivering technology solutions to clients, we expect that physicians and their patients will be able to enjoy the benefits of advanced health IT sooner and with more dramatic results. AT&T will own and operate the combined platform as AT&T Healthcare Community Online and lead efforts to evolve technology solutions and bridge clinical and information needs across patients, physicians, hospitals and ancillary organizations. AMA will remain actively engaged and will collaborate with AT&T on business strategies to expand availability and accessibility of health IT for physicians and practices. "If caregivers across the country aren't connected, they can't collaborate effectively as a team. By joining forces with the nation's largest physician organization, we're providing a seamless solution to meet the "last mile' of connectivity across the entire healthcare ecosystem, said Randall Porter, Assistant Vice President, AT&T ForHealth, AT&T Business Solutions. Both organizations will be discussing the alliance at booth #3829 at HIMSS12 in Las Vegas from Feb. 20 Feb. 24, 2012. ### For more information contact: Robert J. Mills American Medical Association 312-543-7268 robert.mills@ama-assn.org Wendi Fuller AT&T Corporate Communications 214-373-0118 wendi.fuller@att.com Follow AMA on Twitter and Facebook .