Humedica, a clinical analytics company, today announced it has launched a new predictive analytic model to help identify patients at high risk of being hospitalized for congestive heart failure (CHF).

The model is meant to identify high-risk CHF patients before they have been hospitalized, “helping to reduce hospital admissions among the sickest, most costly patients in America,” according to the story at healthcare-informatics.com.

Developed with clinical data pulled directly from patients’ electronic medical records (EMRs), the company claims the new system is “more accurate and more-timely than other predictive analytic tools that are based upon claims-based risk predictors.”

According to the American Heart Association (AHA), five million people are living with CHF and almost a half a million new cases are diagnosed every year. The AHA reports that it’s the most common reason for people over 65 to be hospitalized. CHF is among the most costly and most preventable cause of inpatient admissions in the U.S., according to Humedica, the story says. Despite highly effective interventions, “40 percent of all Medicare patients with CHF are readmitted to hospitals within 90 days of a previous admission,” the story reports.

“We are leveraging the power of millions of patient experiences in our data warehouse, and are providing highly predictive capabilities that identify CHF patients who would likely end up hospitalized without prior medical intervention,” said Dr. Paul Bleicher, Humedica’s chief medical officer, in the story. “Humedica is empowering clinicians to target specific groups of high-risk CHF patients and intervene before their condition worsens.”

CHF is estimated to cost the US $35 billion each year, according to the story.  The cost of hospitalization for CHF is twice that of cancer, according to heartsite.com.

“Predictive analytics powered by clinically-rich data is the future of health care and we are very excited to be on the leading edge of this innovation,” said Michael Weintraub, Humedica’s president and CEO. “As health care providers move squarely into risk-based population health management, they need cutting edge systems that will help them improve patient care and lower cost. As one of the most costly and most preventable outcomes, CHF hospitalization is a great place to start.”

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