PicassoMD and Ribbon Health

July 19, 2024

We are excited to announce our latest partnership with Ribbon Health and CareJourney by Arcadia. This collaboration is set to enhance how we guide our patients to the most suitable and cost-effective healthcare providers, ensuring better outcomes and more affordable care.

Navigating the healthcare system can be daunting. Providers and patients often face difficulty finding the right specialists who offer high-quality care at reasonable costs. This is mainly due to the fragmented and siloed nature of healthcare data, which makes it challenging to identify the best specialists for each patient’s unique needs.

Our partnership with Ribbon Health and CareJourney by Arcadia makes it simple for providers to guide their patients to the best specialists. This is critical for the success of value-based care, as 80% of healthcare costs occur outside of the primary care provider’s office.

Instead of struggling to determine the best specialist for each referral, providers simply send their referrals to PicassoMD, directly from within their EHR. PicassoMD then uses the patient data contained in the referral, including location, insurance, and condition, combined with the provider or practice’s list of preferred specialists and Ribbon’s robust provider data directory (including cost and quality data from CareJourney by Arcadia) to determine to which specialist the referral should be sent.

Consider the scenario of referring a patient to an orthopedist for what ultimately leads to joint replacement surgery. The difference between the 25th and 75th percentile for allowed in-network charges for this procedure can be over $30,000, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation and Peterson Center study1, leading to higher costs for the patient’s risk-bearing entity and potentially out-of-pocket expenses for the patient. However, this information is not readily available to providers and patients when deciding which specialist to see.

How This Benefits Patients:

  1. Better Health Outcomes: This means fewer unnecessary treatments and better health outcomes overall.
  2. Cost-Effective Care: By guiding patients to more cost-effective options, we help reduce overall healthcare costs​​​​. 
  3. Improved Patient Experience: By reducing the number of touchpoints needed to find the right specialist, we enhance the patient experience, making it less stressful and more efficient.

Reza Sanai MD, CoCEO of PicassoMD, emphasizes the impact of this partnership: “The primary objective of PicassoMD’s referral navigation platform is to automate the matching of patients to high-quality, value-oriented specialists. With the Ribbon Provider Data Platform, we get access to accurate data on 99% of providers and facilities in the U.S., including cost and quality data from CareJourney by Arcadia, and this has proven invaluable to our technology solution.”  

The integration with Ribbon Health and CareJourney by Arcadia allows PicassoMD to access a centralized source of reliable cost and quality data. Here's a closer look at what each partner brings to the table:

  • Ribbon Health: Provides a data platform with detailed provider information including locations, education, credentials, clinical specialties, accepted insurances, and patient ratings. 
  • CareJourney by Arcadia: Layers aggregate measures of provider cost efficiency and outcomes quality within the Ribbon solution. The data is developed by analyzing claims data to identify complication rates, readmission rates, patient mortality rates, avoidable ER visits, and more.

This partnership marks a significant step forward in our mission to provide high-quality, affordable healthcare to all. 

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to innovate and improve our services. Together, we can make healthcare better for everyone.

1 https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/price-transparency-and-variation-in-u-s-health-services/