UMD and Inovalon Collaborate to Launch Two New Major Healthcare Industry Research Studies

UMD and Inovalon Collaborate to Launch Two New Major Healthcare Industry Research Studies

Inovalon, a leading technology company providing advanced, cloud-based data analytics and data-driven intervention platforms to the healthcare industry, today announced it will partner with The Center for Health Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS) at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business Collaborative on research efforts that will focus on how digital solutions can be more effectively deployed to address outcomes such as patient safety, healthcare quality, efficiency in healthcare delivery and a reduction in health disparities.

Collaboration between Inovalon and CHIDS will advance innovative health data analytics using large-scale data and powerful infrastructure, while optimizing decision-making for health insurance program design. The Inovalon analytics research team will collaborate with researchers at CHIDS to use advanced analytics to unleash the power of big data in an effort to better understand and reduce “churning,” the involuntary movement of covered members from one health plan or coverage system to another. The study will examine factors associated with churn to better understand when and why consumers leave an insurance plan over time.

“Member churn is becoming a growing issue for plans operating in the Commercial Accountable Care Act (ACA) marketplace. The problem not only makes programs more costly to administer, but also interrupts the continuity of coverage and care,” said Christie Teigland, PhD, senior director of statistical research at Inovalon. “With a deeper understanding of churn – including the ability to predict which members are most likely to leave – individual plans can develop better strategies to mitigate the impact, better project costs and create targeted marketing campaigns aimed at improving member retention.”

The second collaborative research project will examine Medicare Advantage (MA) plan performance. Inovalon will work with CHIDS to identify which MA insurance plans are more likely to improve in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Five Star Rating system. The first-of-its-kind analysis will explore how patients benefit from plans that achieve higher ratings and examine how members respond to ratings, while making enrollment decisions. In addition, the analysis will identify factors that can help plans efficiently close gaps in care and improve star ratings.

“These two important studies will have significant impact and provide great value for the healthcare industry,” said Dr. Ritu Agarwal, senior associate dean for faculty and research and co-director of CHIDS at the Robert H. Smith School of Business. “With the support of the Inovalon advanced analytics research team, we can gain meaningful insights into Commercial ACA and Medicare Advantage trends that can in turn be used to help health plans manage these large and growing populations more effectively and efficiently to ultimately improve healthcare quality and lives of millions of patients across the country.”

Working with Inovalon, UMD has also added a new course on big data to its curriculum titled, “Big Data: Strategy, Management, and Applications.” Inovalon experts will actively participate in the class, which is aimed at helping graduate students not only understand business issues related to big data but also how to successfully design and implement big data strategies. The joint program also includes an Inovalon intern program for UMD graduate students, training students to be data scientists in the healthcare industry.

About the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS)

The Center for Health Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS) is an academic research center based in the Department of Decision, Operations & Information Technology (DO&IT) at the Robert H. Smith School of Business that collaborates closely with industry, government, and other key health system stakeholders. CHIDS’ research seeks to understand how digital technologies can be more effectively deployed to address outcomes such as patient safety, healthcare quality, efficiency in healthcare delivery, and a reduction in health disparities. CHIDS offers the benefit of renowned scholars in healthcare analytics and modeling, technology innovation, adoption, implementation, innovation, and design. The pool of talent, knowledge and expertise in DO&IT is acknowledged by several publications as a top-5 performer in research production worldwide; the Information Systems group is ranked in the top-10 worldwide by Businessweek and U.S. News and World Report. CHIDS is a pioneer in the study of digitally enabled health system transformation and is widely known for its thought leadership and research collaborations.

About Inovalon

Inovalon is a leading technology company that combines advanced cloud-based data analytics and data-driven intervention platforms to achieve meaningful insight and impact in clinical and quality outcomes, utilization, and financial performance across the healthcare landscape. Inovalon's unique achievement of value is delivered through the effective progression of Turning Data into Insight, and Insight into Action®. Large proprietary datasets, advanced integration technologies, sophisticated predictive analytics, data-driven intervention platforms, and deep subject matter expertise deliver a seamless, end-to-end capability that brings the benefits of big data and large-scale analytics to the point of care. Driven by data, Inovalon uniquely identifies gaps in care, quality, data integrity, and financial performance – while bringing to bear the unique capabilities to resolve them. Providing technology that supports hundreds of healthcare organizations in 98.2% of U.S. counties and Puerto Rico, Inovalon's cloud-based analytical and data-driven intervention platforms are informed by data pertaining to more than 769,000 physicians, 261,000 clinical facilities, and more than 123 million Americans providing a powerful solution suite that drives high-value impact, improving quality and economics for health plans, ACOs, hospitals, physicians, consumers and pharma/life-sciences researchers. For more information, visit www.inovalon.com.

September 16, 2015

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