By Robbie Hughes, Founder and CEO, Lumeon
How it all started…
When we started this company, we started it with a very simple aim. Enable our customers to deliver consistently high-quality care at scale. This sounds like a simple, reasonable objective. It turns out that the way in which we went about achieving it was very different to the way the rest of the market thought about it.
Our reasoning was logical. If we can create a technology platform that allows those concerned with the quality and consistency of care delivery to monitor and control the process of care delivery; then quality, consistency and cost efficiency will be a natural by-product of such an approach.
We created this platform by using the patient as the anchor for the technology. Following the patient throughout the care process provided us with a vehicle for ensuring that the right things were being done at the right time. Rather than prompting the provider to remember to order certain tests, or consider certain options based on a diagnosis, surely it would be better to design the patient journey in such a way that pre-empted such decisions or options. By looking at the context of the patient, rather than just the diagnosis, much of the activity can be automated. Providers and the care team make the best possible use of their time.
This is what we built, and we call it Care Pathway Management. Rolling the clock forward, we’ve seen that this approach allows our customers of every size to do exactly what we describe, across thousands of sites and millions of patients every year.
As we have grown, we’ve seen that the goal of consistent high-quality care delivery at scale is shared not only in our European customer base, but also across the Atlantic. There, the technology landscape is very, very different. A combination of activity-based reimbursement and Meaningful Use incentives have ensured that technology is abundant, but the need for care delivery optimisation has not been as acutely felt as it has in Europe. As 2018 becomes 2019, we’re seeing more and more payors and providers coming under increasing cost pressure, with little to no understanding of the actual quality of their decisions or indeed their impact.
Lumeon was born in a world of extreme cost pressure. The goal was delivering the best possible care at a single, predictable price. In this world, the aim is not only to be able to document what was delivered, but to explicitly manage every single patient to a price point that is agreed upfront. This is very different challenge to the one that U.S.-based technology is designed to address. But it is, in fact, the very challenge that the industry needs to answer today.
The aim of this blog is to help share some of the stories, experiences and anecdotes that have emerged as a result of solving these problems for over 10 years. Our hope is that our different approach and our experience in both Europe and the U.S. will change the way people think about solving their challenges on the ground, and open the market to a new way of thinking.
As a closing thought, I leave you with a vision. Imagine a world where the billions of dollars spent on claims management were instead focussed on optimising clinical care delivery. Now imagine a technology platform that might emerge as a result of this singular focus. This is Lumeon.
