Patent Issued for System and method for determining and indicating value of healthcare (USPTO 11056237)

2021 JUL 23 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Health Value Analytics Inc. (Brentwood, Tennessee, United States) has been issued patent number 11056237, according to news reporting originating out of Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx editors.

The patent’s inventors are Fidone, George (Lufkin, TX, US), Fidone, Justin Craig (West Linn, OR, US), Lane, Mark (Franklin, TN, US), Marshall, Van (Sunnyvale, TX, US), Powell, Jr., G. Edward (Nashville, TN, US), Rader, Brett M. (Round Rock, TX, US), White, Norman E. (Austin, TX, US), Williams, Michael (The Hills, TX, US).

This patent was filed on February 8, 2018 and was published online on July 6, 2021.

From the background information supplied by the inventors, news correspondents obtained the following quote: “As the cost of providing health care continues to increase at an unsustainable rate, health care providers (especially physicians) are increasingly being held responsible for controlling cost in an effort to provide high quality care while controlling costs. Drivers of this shift in responsibility include the federal government (Medicare, Medicaid, VA, CHiPs), state governments, third party payers (both for-profit and not-for-profit), and Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) as well as individual hospitals and medical groups. Increasingly, health care providers are being asked to share in the financial risk in providing medical care.”

Supplementing the background information on this patent, NewsRx reporters also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “A processor-implemented method for determining and indicating values of medical treatment plans, includes the processor creating value baselines comprising health metric values for approved plans of care; detecting an activity indicating a patient-related event during a visit associated with a patient; generating a health value continuum based on the visit; generating a comparison of the health value continuum to a value baseline; and providing data and instructions to display on a display page, a representation of the health value continuum to value baseline comparison.

“A method for determining and indicating values of medical treatment plans, the method executed over a client-server architecture in a local private network, includes a server creating value baselines comprising health metric values for approved plans of care; the server receiving a detected activity related to medical care for a patient having an associated diagnosis during a visit of the patient; and the server: determining the activity warrants generating a health value continuum, generating a health value continuum corresponding to the diagnosis, generating a comparison of the health value continuum to the value baseline, and providing data and instructions to the client to display a representation of the health value continuum to value baseline comparison.

“A method executed by a processor of a health value analytics system in communication with a device external to the health value analytics system, comprising the processor monitoring for and receiving an indication of a patient-related event from the external device, the patient-related event referencing a visit of a patient; and based on a visit reference, the processor: determining a need to and generating a health value continuum: generating of a comparison of the health value continuum to a value baseline for an approved plan of care for the patient, and providing of data and instructions to display on a display page at the external device, a representation of the health value continuum to value baseline comparison.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A method, implemented on a client-server architecture comprising a plurality of physician computing devices and one or more central servers, each server comprising a processor, for improving a physician’s workflow including by determining and indicating values of medical treatment plans, comprising: a health value analytics (HVA) system comprising an HVA server and a plurality of HVA client applications, the HVA server comprising a processor, the HVA server creating value baselines comprising health metric values for approved plans of care; the HVA system detecting a first activity occurring at an electronic medical record (EMR) server, the EMR server separate and distinct from the HVA system, the HVA system and the EMR server connected through a local private network, the first activity indicating a patient-related event occurring during a visit associated with a patient, comprising: an HVA client application, provided by the HVA server and instantiated as a thin-client on a physician’s computing device, detecting, at the physician’s computing device, a communication from the physician’s computing device to the EMR server, the communication comprising the first activity, the HVA client application detecting a physical location of a display of an electronic medical record for the patient in an EMR page on a display screen of the physician’s computing device, and the HVA client application providing the communication and the physical location to the HVA server; in response to the detected first activity, the HVA server generating a health value continuum for the patient and generating a comparison of the health value continuum to a value baseline; and in response to the electronic medical record physical location, the HVA server providing data and instructions to display and maintain displayed at the physician’s computing device on an HVA display page, a representation of the health value continuum to value baseline comparison at a location adjacent to the EMR page, comprising: placing the representation of the health value continuum to the value baseline adjacent to the EMR page for the patient, monitoring activity on the physician’s computing device related to the electronic medical record of the patient, and terminating the display of the health value continuum to the value baseline upon the HVA client application detecting a second activity comprising termination of the display of the electronic medical record of the patient and display of a second electronic medical record for a second patient.

“2. The method of claim 1, wherein the patient-related event comprises a patient visit that has an associated diagnosis.

“3. The method of claim 1, comprising: detecting re-display of the electronic medical record for the patient on the EMR page of the physician’s computing device; maintaining terminated, the display of the health value continuum to the value baseline comparison; detecting a third activity comprising a medical treatment order for the patient; and providing updated data and instructions to display an update of the representation of the health value continuum to value baseline comparison for display adjacent to the EMR page for the patient.

“4. The method of claim 3, wherein the second activity comprises a change to a cost basis of the health value continuum.

“5. The method of claim 1, wherein the second activity comprises navigation away from the EMR page for the patient and to a second EMR page for the second patient.

“6. The method of claim 3, wherein the physician’s computing device and the processors are connected through a client-server system, and wherein the update comprises minimal changes to the representation of the health value continuum to value baseline comparison.

“7. A method executed over a client-server architecture in a local private network, the local private network connecting an electronic medical record (EMR) system and a health value analytics (HVA) system, the EMR system comprising an EMR server and EMR client devices, the HVA system, separate from the EMR system and comprising an HVA server and thin-client HVA applications, the method, comprising: creating by the HVA server, value baselines comprising health metric values for approved plans of care; receiving by the HVA server, detected and provided by execution of a thin-client HVA application instantiated on an EMR client device, a detected first activity related to medical care for a patient having an associated diagnosis during a visit of the patient; and the HVA server: generating a health value continuum corresponding to the diagnosis, generating a comparison of the health value continuum to the value baseline, and providing data and instructions to display and maintain displayed a representation of the health value continuum to value baseline comparison on an HVA display page in a position adjacent to an EMR display page displayed on the EMR client device, the EMR display page including an EMR display for the patient, comprising: receiving a physical location of the EMR display page determined by execution of the thin-client HVA application, placing the representation of the health value continuum to the value baseline adjacent to the EMR display for the patient, and terminating the display of the health value continuum to the value baseline upon the thin-client HVA client application detecting a second activity comprising termination of the display of the electronic medical record of the patient and display of a second electronic medical record for a second patient.

“8. The method of claim 7, wherein the EMR client and the EMR server are invoked on a single hardware platform.

“9. The method of claim 7, wherein the HVA server provides data and instructions to invoke updates to the representation of the health value continuum to value baseline comparison.

“10. The method of claim 9, wherein the EMR client and HVA server execute a quality of service protocol in which updates are placed in queue first in order of priority and second in order of generation.

“11. A method executed by a processor of a health value analytics (HVA) system in communication an electronic medical record (EMR) device external to the HVA system for improving physicians’ workflows, the method, comprising: an HVA server receiving, by execution of a thin-client HVA application instantiated on the EMR device, an indication of a patient-related event, the patient-related event referencing a visit of a patient; and based on a visit reference, the processor: generating of a comparison of the health value continuum to a value baseline for an approved plan of care for the patient, and providing the comparison and instructions to display on a display of the EMR device, the display including an EMR for the patient, a representation of the health value continuum to value baseline comparison, comprising: receiving a detection, sent by the thin-client HVA application, a physical location of the EMR for the patient on the EMR display, providing instructions to place the representation of the health value continuum to the value baseline adjacent to the EMR for the patient, and terminating the display of the health value continuum to the value baseline upon the thin-client HVA client application detecting a second activity comprising termination of the display of the EMR for the patient and display of a second EMR for a second patient.

“12. The method of claim 11, comprising: receiving from the EMR device, a second indication of a second patient-related event; determining a need to provide an updated continuum update based on the second patient-related event; generating an update to the health value continuum and the comparison; and providing data and instructions to the EMR device to display on a display page, a representation of the update to the comparison.

“13. The method of claim 11, the comparison comprising a progress bar showing a current relation between the value baseline and the value continuum, the progress bar indicating a cost to date to treat the patient.

“14. The method of claim 13, wherein the comparison is based on a baseline value of historical patient-related events.

“15. The method of claim 14, comprising the HVA server generating the value baseline, wherein the patient-related event comprises one or more of: admission of the patient to a hospital; a diagnosis of a medical condition of the patient; and one or more orders to treat the medical condition, the one or more orders comprising a medical treatment plan for the patient, and wherein the value continuum comprises a cost for each of the one or more orders.

“16. The method of claim 15, wherein the HVA server generating a value continuum comprises the HVA server determining the patient-related event comprises one of creating a cost to treat the patient, and changing a cost to treat the patient.”

There are additional claims. Please visit full patent to read further.

For the URL and additional information on this patent, see: Fidone, George. System and method for determining and indicating value of healthcare. U.S. Patent Number 11056237, filed February 8, 2018, and published online on July 6, 2021. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=11056237.PN.&OS=PN/11056237RS=PN/11056237

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