New findings by BHI add to the increasing evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to contain it have taken a terrible toll on children. In the interest of understanding the pandemic’s impact on children, BHI examined pediatric trends for 2020. We found that in the previous year, the trend in the cost of an ED visit for children under …
Top Five Ways COVID-19 has Changed Employers’ Approach to Health Benefits
After more than a year of dealing with the ramifications of COVID-19, employers anticipate feeling the impact of the pandemic for years to come. The past 14 months have changed our interactions with and our assumptions about work. They’ve also changed what employers and employees expect of each other. Additionally, COVID-19 has surfaced some truths about the way employers approach …
Advisory Council Explores COVID-19’s Impact on Commercial Health Insurance Coverage
BHI’s Advisory Council members kicked off their research projects this year and in one COVID-19-focused effort, found that research often adds value through counterintuitive findings. BHI Advisory Council members Michael Chernew, PhD, of Harvard University and Vivian Ho, PhD, of Rice University have been looking specifically at COVID’s impact on Blue health insurance disenrollment rates and how the pandemic has …
Transparent, Meaningful Physician Performance Metrics
Last year, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana (BCBSLA) set out to share actionable, credible, and accurate cost and quality reports with providers. BHI has been partnering with the Plan since March 2020 to design and implement such reports for practitioners in BCBSLA’s Specialty Care Insights program. In delivering enhanced “Provider Index” reports, BCBSLA utilizes BHI’s proprietary Episode of …
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning — What is the Difference and Why it Matters
By Russ Michael, senior director, Methodology and Data Science, Blue Health Intelligence® (BHI®) Artificial intelligence (AI)-driven technologies are increasingly prevalent in all parts of our lives, including healthcare and health insurance. The pace of change in healthcare AI and data analytics has been breathtaking, as new products and technologies promise to improve quality, reduce costs, and help health plans better …
SDOH-Related Z Codes: Documentation to Aid Health Equity
Z Codes are a powerful tool to track SDOH factors. They can help data scientists understand how such factors affect medical outcomes.
Care Analytics News profiles BHI’s Dr. Russ Robbins
“When I left private practice, there was no way to learn other than on the job,” Robbins says. “Now, there are many good healthcare informatics programs. I tell younger colleagues to have some experience of clinical medicine before going into the business side. My knowledge of direct patient care has helped me understand the data and what is or isn’t …
Bringing Women Back to Breast Cancer Screening, Safely and Seamlessly
A year ago, Thrive Earlier Detection (Thrive) won the BlueCross BlueShield Data Innovation Challenge. Healthbox, a HIMSS solution company, collaborated with the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and Blue Health Intelligence® (BHI®) to implement that contest. As oncologists gather this week for the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), Healthbox shares recent independent insights from Thrive about breast cancer screening and …
Wearables at work and privacy concerns
BHI’s senior vice president of product management and business development, Mary Henderson, is quoted in a recent BBC Worklife article on the rise of employee health tracking via wearable devices. BBC’s full Q&A with Henderson and Sanket Shah, BHI’s assistant vice president for account management, is featured below. BBC Worklife: We’ve seen interest from various corporations (particularly in the U.S.) …
Healthcare options
In this guest post featured on Upjourney.com, BHI’s Sanket Shah provides a firsthand account of how following physician instructions can sometimes fail to account for lower-cost treatment settings. He explains the costly lesson of getting x-rays and CT scans in numerous locales after an ankle injury, and how the higher costs he experienced might have been avoided. His personal experience …