The Jonah Group

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Health Management Program

The Problem

Blue Care Network (BCN) ran a Health Management Program (HMP) by distributing reports to providers on Compact Disk (CD).  The HMP tracked the health of members with selected conditions and results from health screenings.  Providers used the data to make better treatment decisions for their patients.  BCN used the data to monitor provider performance.  The reports were distributed to 3200 providers and 83 primary care groups. 

Providers submitted updates to BCN's Medical Informatics Department via floppy disks, fax and email.  This data was loaded into the HMP database manually by BCN's staff.  In many cases providers did not submit updates because of the difficulty of sending the data to BCN.

Preparation and distribution of the reports on CD was very expensive and time consuming.  Additional manual work was required to load data received from providers back into the HMP database.  BCN rarely received updates from providers because they found it difficult to send the data to BCN, which diminished the accuracy and value of the HMP reports.  Providers were frustrated with the quality and timeliness of data they received from BCN.

BCN decided to replace the CD-based system with a web-based system.  They were concerned about the performance of a centralized reporting system used by thousands of remote providers and the scalability of their web architecture.  BCN needed a partner with extensive web, database and reporting experience.  The Jonah Group was selected to run a feasibility study, analyze costs and benefits, design an architecture for the system and implement the solution.  The web-based system would be distributed to providers across Michigan.

Our Responsibilities

• Project planning and cost estimation
• Management of a team of 5 technical developers
• Architecture design for all tiers of the application
• Schema design to support high throughput and low response times
• Building a web-based user interface using Java technology
• Creating stored procedures to retrieve reporting data
• Creating automated and repeatable build and deployment processes

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The Solution

We delivered a solution with the following features and technologies:

Features

• Group-based security:
  • Primary Care Group
  • Primary Care Physician
  • BCN Employee
• Panel and patient-level reporting covering:
  • Treatment Opportunities
  • Eligibility
  • Conditions
  • Case Management
  • Service Episodes
  • Audit
• Report drill-downs and downloads
• Provider updates:
  • Contra-Indications
  • Service Dates & Results
  • Comments
• Automated update review and acceptance workflow

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Technologies

• HTML, Javascript, JSP
• Struts / Java Servlets, XML Beans
• WebSphere Application Server
• Sun ONE
• Oracle Database
• PL/SQL Stored Procedures
• CVS, ANT

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Unique Challenges Solved.

• Improved timeliness and accuracy of HMP data distributed to providers
• Designed a database schema and web application architecture that supported our client's throughput and distribution requirements
• Designed a workflow that encouraged providers to submit updates, which improved the quality of the HMP reports and provider satisfaction with BCN
• Designed a set of stored procedures that isolated the web application from changes to the database
• Built a security solution based on BCN's provider groups
• Introduced use case and object-oriented analysis techniques to client team
• Established coding conventions and style guidelines to improve maintainability
• Introduced an automated build process
• Created automated unit tests for complex components
• Delivered the complete solution on time and budget

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