ODG and Peers Health Expand Partnership to Include Data Collection and New Products

Expansion will deliver new innovations and lead to enhanced functionality within the ODG product line

SEATTLE, January 10, 2018 – ODG, the leader in return to work and occupational health treatment guidelines, and Peers Health are proud to announce an extension of their multi-year partnership. In addition to providing technology and sales support, Peers will now supply ODG with new data it collects from industry participants and, through a data-sharing agreement, develop its own proprietary products applying advanced technologies in machine learning and artificial intelligence.

ODG, a unit of MCG Health and part of the Hearst Health network, collects de-identified case and claims data from its customers and partners that informs the guidelines’ ongoing editorial development and provides disability duration benchmarks. Through this expanded agreement, Peers Health will contribute to enhanced functionality within the existing ODG product line and also deliver innovative new systems. Said Phil LeFevre, Managing Director for ODG at MCG Health, “ODG is pleased to have Peers Health lead our data collection efforts. Our teams have worked closely together on multiple business fronts for quite some time. We view claims analytics as the Yin to evidence-based medicine’s Yang, working in concert to optimize outcomes using auto-authorization for quality care with interventional triage, putting the right resources on the right claims at the right time. We’re confident Peers will help us stay on the cutting edge of data-driven medicine.”

Peers and ODG share the view that while individual industry providers, such as insurance carriers, third-party administrators, and health systems, will benefit from internal data analytics efforts, the most powerful advances will arise from the publishing industry, where the goal is to aggregate and synthesize content from all sources and release commercial products that can serve a broad spectrum of industry participants.

Peers Health CEO Jon Seymour, MD, said, “We have reached the point where raw outcomes data can and will become the fuel for medical decision-making. At the same time, the healthcare community is finally realizing the relevance of return to work, or functional recovery, as a critical measure of return to health. The ODG data, then, has remarkable potential to transform not just occupational case management but also mainstream medicine. In the next few years we will deliver dramatic improvements in risk assessment and decision support tools that can apply to virtually every medical episode.”

About Peers Health
Peers Health (www.peershealth.com), based in Chicago and Denver, is a consulting, sales, and technology company that helps population health stakeholders excel in case management and clinical delivery to get people back to work – and health – faster. The founders, with combined experience in healthcare of over 60 years, have built solid relationships and helped operationalize solutions with many of the world’s largest hospital systems, insurance companies, third-party administrators, employers, governments, and software providers.

About ODG
ODG, an MCG Health company, (www.mcg.com/odg) provides unbiased, evidence-based guidelines that unite payers, providers and employers in the effort to confidently and effectively return employees to health. The clinical guidelines and analytical tools within ODG are designed to improve and benchmark return-to-work performance, facilitate quality care while limiting inappropriate utilization, assess claim risk for interventional triage, and set reserves based on industry data.

About MCG Health 
MCG, part of the Hearst Health network, helps healthcare organizations implement informed care strategies that proactively and efficiently move people toward health. MCG’s transparent assessment of the latest research and scholarly articles, along with our own data analysis, gives patients, providers and payers the vetted information they need to feel confident in every care decision, in every moment. For more information visit www.mcg.com or follow our Twitter handle at @MCG_Health.

Contact
Daphne Worrall
ODGTel: 406 622 5516
Daphne.Worrall@mcg.com