Chordline Health makes managing your patient population easier with our all-in-one platform ACUITYnxt, prioritizing data-driven decisions and collaborative care coordination. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Chordline Health CEO Billie Jo Nutter to learn more about the company.
Billie Jo Nutter’s Background
What is Billie Jo Nutter’s background? Nutter said:
“I am very passionate about healthcare. I’m a therapist by training—a physical therapist and speech pathologist. I started my career in the rehabilitation arena and worked my way up to the role of CEO of several service companies, where we provided contract therapy services to hospitals, skilled nursing homes and hospice centers. Then I began to work on the healthcare technology side, offering technology that makes clinicians’ workflows more efficient and allows them to spend more time providing hands-on care.”
“As CEO of Chordline Health, which specializes in population health analytics and managed care solutions, I’m helping to bridge the gap between healthcare costs and delivering care that helps people get well. I get to say with confidence that I make a difference in someone’s life every day.”
Nutter described her personal responsibilities:
“The combination of clinical and healthcare technology experience enables me to understand where there are gaps in care and why. For instance, some patients struggle with food insecurity. This limits access to nutritious food, which in turn affects their health. Some can’t afford their medications, so they’re not filling their prescriptions. Some lack access to reliable transportation, so they’re not getting to their primary care physician for regular visits. I’m passionate about closing these gaps in care.”
“At Chordline Health, I craft the strategic vision for what we do, which is to create powerful tools that impact population health. When you have a product that can pull in all of the information needed for clinicians to make care decisions about a patient or a health plan member, that’s a powerful tool for connecting the dots in patient care. Our work streamlines care coordination and management for medically complex and underserved patients so they can more easily access care and improve their quality of life.”
Favorite Memory
What has been Nutter’s favorite memory working for the company so far? Nutter reflected:
“One of the things I’ve loved about working with Chordline is the ability to create a very people-centric culture where really bright and impressive people come up with great ideas to address our customers’ needs. We have a product that addresses pain points in the market—namely, how to identify and treat the healthcare needs of underserved populations and give clinicians the tools to perform their work in ways that are satisfying, personally and professionally. When you feel like you’re creating something fantastic, it’s hard not to be passionate about the work you do.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Nutter explained:
“At Chordline Health, our solutions give health plans and health systems a clear view into their patient population with aggregated, multi-source data that goes beyond episodic case management. This includes data around social determinants of health (SDOH). Our core products include ACUITYnxt, a shared managed care and population health platform that gives teams access to data-driven clinical intelligence and promotes end-to-end care collaboration, and Acuity Analytics, which combines Johns Hopkins ACG predictive analytics with a powerful managed care workflow support system. We also consistently invest in enhancing the security of our services, surpassing industry standards.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Nutter and the team faced in building the company? Butter acknowledged:
“One of the challenges in population health management is understanding the need to prioritize the work we do. Everything is important, but not everything is a priority. I often take a step back with our team to determine, “What’s the most important thing we need to focus on right now?” This strengthens our ability to execute by clearing the path for innovation, concentrating on the areas where we’re able to provide the most value.”
“At Chordline, we’ve found that seamless access to actionable population health data makes a difference, especially if it’s delivered directly within clinicians’ workflows in an easy-to-read view.”
“We created intuitive dashboards that make it easy for clinicians to view trends such as lead indicators for unexpected pharmacy costs. With advanced analytics, we can also project risk by population and by member and empower clinicians to act upon this intelligence to improve health outcomes while reducing utilization and healthcare costs. They can see the percentage of patients who they’ve helped to become healthier and the extent to which they’ve reduced unnecessary costs and utilization, and they can point to the number of people they’ve kept from being re-hospitalized. That’s a level of clarity that reenforces professional satisfaction and motivates employees to do more.”
Evolution Of Chordline Health’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Nutter noted:
“We took our approach to population health analytics to the next level through a partnership with Johns Hopkins. We leverage Johns Hopkins’ data to strengthen our ability to identify which patients might be good candidates for care management programs and quickly align patients with needed resources. Access to multiple types of data through this partnership also elevates our ability to determine which patients are taking multiple medications and how these medications could be streamlined to avoid adverse effects and reduce costs. It can even point to opportunities to more effectively manage multiple chronic conditions.”
“Perhaps most important, our work with Johns Hopkins enables clients to see where they stand in relation to their peers when it comes to managing the health of the populations they serve. Clients can then connect directly with their peers to understand the lessons learned that can help overcome challenges around population health management for a more effective approach. Partnerships like this, fueled by data, give healthcare organizations an edge in taking the right steps to improve health.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Nutter cited:
“As we’ve grown, our access to data intelligence for population health management and managed care has evolved. Today, we extrapolate data from more than 145 sources to obtain a big-picture view of each patient’s health and the social factors that influence health—but expanding our data view isn’t the only factor that supports our success. We’ve also ensured our systems are interoperable with any client system so that no matter where a clinician works, that clinician can leverage our data to make better healthcare decisions.
And just as access to relevant data is critical to building trust with clients, so is our approach to data security.”
“We know that population health data is among the most sensitive data a healthcare organization can possess. Unless we can protect information related to SDOH, or the conditions in which people live, work, learn, play and worship, patients will be reluctant to share this information, even with their providers. At Chordline Health, we contract with third-party security firms to conduct quarterly vulnerability scans and annual penetration tests and share the results with our customers. We also have automated safeguards in place that query content every six minutes to ensure the system is compliant. If a concern arises, services are automatically shut down as the issue is addressed.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking Nutter about customer success stories, she highlighted:
“Our work with Valor Healthcare, a small Medicare Advantage institutional special needs plan, supported the health plan on its growth journey. With a population health management platform that is reliable, scalable and easy to use, Chordline Health positions the health plan to meet the unique needs of Valor Healthcare’s most vulnerable members. “The extensive range of reports has proven invaluable, and we’re grateful for the team’s flexibility in customizing features to meet our specific needs,” the health plan’s director of clinical operations told us.”
“Meanwhile, for Populytics, an employee health and wellness organization based in Allentown, Pa., our solutions have helped decrease the turnaround time for prior authorization to one day or less. And across clients, including JAI Medical Systems, Atrio Health Plans and AvMed, we’re hearing that our approach to implementation, data integration and customer service results in seamless service that builds trust. “The team not only anticipated our needs, but also advocated for us, making recommendations that were spot on,” an executive for Atrio Health Plans shared.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Nutter affirmed:
“There are three key factors that differentiate our approach to population health management from the competition:
— Access to robust data analytics that point the way forward for better population health – Access to SDOH data matters little if organizations can’t use it to determine where the greatest needs exist and design a plan for better outcomes at reduced cost. We incorporate data from a wide range of sources, from EHRs to social service agencies and community-based organizations—no easy task, given that these data come from multiple systems and in multiple forms. We then normalize these data to ensure they “speak the same language” and apply advanced population health management software for a next-level view.
— Intuitive dashboards that put population health data at clinicians’ fingertips, directly within their workflows – This makes it easy for clinicians to understand, at a glance, the factors that influence population health and the individual health of their most complex patients. Want to know the top 10 drugs prescribed to a given population? Our dashboards display not only this information, but also offer insight into the lead indicators for unexpected pharmacy costs.
— The ability to compare health risks against similar populations – At Chordline, our ability to link SDOH data with a predictive modeling program designed by Johns Hopkins gives clients access to a regional and national view into health risks. It also positions clients to understand how well they are responding to these risks and the actions that could make a difference for improved health and better value.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Nutter pointed out:
“I believe actionable intelligence is what makes the difference in population health management. We’re going to continue to evolve our analytics platform and innovate around population health workflows—looking at automation, where possible—to boost patient and clinician engagement and decision-making. We’ll also look at the role that artificial intelligence could play in strengthening our products, and we’ll continue to focus on developing solutions that hold strong appeal across generations and technology skill levels. In everything we do, we want to provide an experience that is intuitive to use for clinicians and patients alike. As our population grows older and more people live with multiple chronic diseases, ease of use will be as integral as actionable intelligence in making an impact on population health.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Nutter concluded:
“It’s hard not to get excited about where population health management is headed and the ways in which it provides value for individuals and entire communities. I’m looking forward to all that lies ahead and the innovations yet to come.”
