"Welcome to our company blog. Within these blog posts, we hope to share our insights on clinical quality management, the patient-centered medical home, chronic disease management in primary care, evidence-based medicine, and the use of technology in ambulatory care settings."

- David Morin, CEO and Donald Nease Jr., MD, Chief Medical Officer

We're very proud to announce our acquisition by The Advisory Board Company (Washington D.C.). An except from The Advisory Board Company's February 3, 2011 Press Release entitled "Company Reports Quarterly Revenue Growth of 23.5% and Contract Value Growth of 18.3%; Issues Guidance for Calendar Year 2011; Announces Acquisition of Population Management Analytics and Patient Registry Software Company" ...The Company also announced the acquisition, as of February 1, 2011, of Cielo MedSolutions, a leading provider of population management analytics and patient registry software in the ambulatory environment. The cash transaction enhances The Advisory Board Company's existing suite of physician performance management solutions through the addition of analytics and workflow tools that give providers visibility across a patient population to enable appropriate clinical decisions. Robert Musslewhite commented, "We are excited to add Cielo's outstanding tools to our portfolio and the talented Cielo team to the Advisory Board. As the market moves towards value-based payment structures, there is increasing urgency for physicians practicing at hospitals and health systems to understand care provided to their patients across all settings. The addition of Cielo to the portfolio allows us to provide these population management analytics and patient registry capabilities in a physician-friendly interface through the Crimson platform. In addition, as our members build capabilities to manage patients across the full continuum of care and work with us to develop the structures to do so--for example through our Medical Home Collaborative, now more than 200 hospitals strong--Cielo's solutions will also provide key value to them." Cielo's Chief Executive Officer David Morin added, "The Advisory Board's Crimson platform, deep knowledge base of best practices, and network of over 2,900 members provides the ideal environment to leverage the strengths and capabilities of the Cielo tool. I--along with the entire Cielo team--am thrilled to join forces with the Advisory Board to enhance our impact on physician practice across care settings. We are excited about the large market opportunity ahead of us and the new ways we will work together to help members provide greater value in patient care."Mr. Musslewhite concluded, "We are very excited about the acquisition and the opportunities to incorporate Cielo into our work. Hospitals and physicians look to us as their solution for physician performance, and since patient registry is a key tool that they use, the addition of this functionality to our portfolio will greatly enhance our ability to serve member needs in this terrain." Dave Morin

At the last Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan quarterly Physician Group Incentive Plan meeting (Dec 2010), one of our customers, Mercy Family Care - Marysville, presented on their use of Cielo Clinic and the quality, efficiency and financial gains they have seen from using it. In this presentation, the care team shows how Cielo fits into their workflow, how a diabetes educator is using the product in coordination with the care team and how patients are educated through the tool. It also provides specific detail on key measure quality improvement and the additional dollars gained by using the program for quality and managed care programs ($80,000+ for 3 physicians!) . Click here to see a link to the presentation and congratulations to the Mercy Family Care - Marysville team! Dave Morin Co-Founder and CEO Cielo MedSolutions

Cielo Clinic has reached a new milestone, it has now served up over 2,000,000 patient encounter forms.  That means over 2,000,000 patient visits have used Cielo Clinic for care reminders, problem lists and care documentation. Quite a milestone and many more to come! Dave Morin Co-Founder and CEO Cielo MedSolutions

We are proud to announce that we have been awarded a $1.3 million Phase II STTR  from the National Cancer Institute to develop and prototype a next-generation clinical quality management system. This award is a follow-on to our previous Phase I project. In the Phase I we studied and documented what technology primary care practices and providers need for disease management and quality improvement. In this Phase II project, we will be developing and prototyping a system that meets these needs. As was the case in Phase I, we are teaming with the University of Michigan Health System Department of Family Medicine on the project. We are also very proud of the perfect score we received on the grant. We think this is a testament to the need of our work. We'll be working with lots of great people on this and involving many in the healthcare community. We look forward to showing you what we come up with with! For more information on the grant, click here. Dave Morin Co-Founder and CEO Cielo MedSolutions

A 2006 report by the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors has  shown that behavioral health patients die 25 years earlier than the general population.  There's strong evidence that this is due to the lack of attention to primary health problems and risk factors in these patients. To support care collaboration between primary and behavioral health providers on behavioral health patients, Cielo is working with the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare,  the oldest and largest national community behavioral healthcare advocacy organization in the country, to implement Cielo Clinic. Through a series of projects, pairs of practices (a pair being one community health center or primary care practice and one behavioral health clinic) will utilize Cielo Clinic to provide both point-of-care reminders for  behavioral and primary care health matters and population management.  Regardless of which provider a patient sees, their encompassing care needs will be presented to the provider seeing them. As a part of this project, Cielo has developed specialized synchronization software that will keep each Cielo  database in synch for data changes.  So, when a diabetes prompt is answered by a behavioral health provider, the primary care provider will get the info about what was done, and vice-versa. These projects span across the United States and they are a great testament to the power of a clinical quality management system for care coordination and use outside of primary care. Dave Morin CEO and Co-Founder Cielo MedSolutions

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) today released a publication entitled "Registries for Evaluating Patient Outcomes: A User’s Guide, Second Edition", a compendium of best practices for registry use. One of our longtime customers, Oakland Southfield Physicians Group (OSP), was featured in the document regarding their ability to integrate and exchange health information from multiple sources with Cielo Clinic.  OSP has always done a superb job of interfacing a wide-range of data into Cielo's clinical data repository and   their success with our product is testament to the value of doing this. The story can be found here: http://www.effectivehealthcare.ahrq.gov/ehc/products/74/531/Registries%202nd%20ed%20final%20to%20Eisenberg%209-15-10.pdf  (Page 269) And, further detail can be found here: http://www.ospdocs.com/OSP+Advantage/Clinical+Quality+Registry-21.html Dave Morin Co-Founder and CEO Cielo MedSolutions

If you happen to be attending the 2010 NAPCRG Conference in Seattle, be sure to listen in on Dr. Nease's (our CMO) presentation of his research (done in conjunction with other members of our Medical Advisory Board), chosen as an Extended Paper for the conference  - "Are Coronary Heart Disease and Depression Independently Associated? A Primary Care Population-based Analysis." Donald Nease MD, University of Michigan; Denise Campbell-Scherer, MD; Lee Green, MD, MPH; Michael Klinkman, MD, MS; Ananda Sen, PhD. Not only is it a fascinating paper on the linkages between CHD and Depression, but it also is a wonderful illustration of what can be done with a registry-type solution that collects true clinical data  in a longitudinal matter (yes, this is referring to our product, Cielo Clinic, the tool that was used in this research). Further narrative from Dr. Nease on the use of registry-type solutions for research can also be found in his recent posted comment on the Health Care Blog (the post is entitled "What's In an EHR?", Dr. Nease's thoughts are in a comment at the bottom of the post). Dave Morin Co-Founder and CEO Cielo MedSolutions

As we now know, meaningful use will require the use of either ICD-9 or SNOMED-CT for coding problem lists.  As our customers know, there is a limit to the value of using ICD-9 coding for disease management (see these prior blog posts).  Therefore, Cielo Clinic utilizes the ICPC classification system in addition to ICD-9 and ICD-10 coding, integrated into the ENCODE thesaurus, to provide the flexibility and specificity needed by care providers. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation have announced that work is now underway to harmonize WHO classifications (this includes ICPC) with SNOMED-CT.    This is great news for those using ICPC, including Cielo Clinic users.   The value of ICPC can be preserved for disease management while allowing it to exist in a "meaningful use" world. Dave Morin Co-Founder and CEO Cielo MedSolutions LLC

Cielo Clinic is now approved to submit Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) e-prescribing measures to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on behalf of care providers.  To take advantage of this opportunity, Cielo Clinic users simply need to implement the integrated e-prescribing module and e-prescribe through it.  Cielo Clinic manages the data required for this incentive payment and submits it on a provider’s behalf to CMS. This is in addition to Cielo's approval to submit PQRI quality measures. Each of these submissions can result in an 2.0% reimbursement on total allowed charges for covered Medicare physician fee schedule services. Dave Morin CEO and Co-Founder Cielo MedSolutions LLC

Please welcome our latest team member, Jordan Washburn.  Jordan will be taking on a Software Engineer role  focused on user interface and software development for our Cielo Clinic products. Prior to Cielo, Jordan has worked at numerous web-based software companies and has an MS in Health Information Technology and a BS in Computational Linguistics, both from the University of Michigan. Dave Morin Co-Founder and CEO Cielo MedSolutions LLC