We are extremely excited for our upcoming release – version 13.0 of the ACG System, our most innovative release to date. ACG System v13.0 is bursting with enhancements, including Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) functionality and a proprietary patient segmentation model, to name a few. Read on to learn more about the highlights of this upcoming release.

Innovation in Social Determinants of Health

The ACG team has spent two years researching SDoH best practices, data availability and impact on health outcomes, culminating in the release of two components in ACG System v13.0: ACG Social Need Markers (SNM) and ACG GeoHealth.

The ACG System’s approach to SDoH is centered on five social care domains with evidence-based impacts on health, and more granular outputs in detailed sub-domains. ACG’s SDoH domains are developed based on evidence that no single variable can fully describe a patient’s social needs. The resulting robust output from ACG v13.0 combines individual attributes into meaningful categories relevant for population health analytics and strategy creation.

Social Need Markers are patient-level markers driven by medical and diagnostic codes, and are included with a standard ACG license. ACG GeoHealth links existing ACG System output to geographically-driven measures of social need and is a separately licensed add-on module. Current System users with interest in purchasing ACG GeoHealth should contact their ACG System account manager.

Ultimately, adding social determinants functionality to your population health toolkit provides ACG System users with tools to understand:

• Impact of geographic disparity on overall health, disease prevalence and population risk
• Opportunities to improve care by addressing social needs
• Relationship of social needs and geographic disparities to utilization and cost outcomes  

Patient Need Groups (PNGs) 

The newly-developed PNG module allows ACG System users to easily apply a clinically-relevant segmentation model to their population. Segmentation models group patients into similar need groupings, creating more actionable insights around health needs, utilization and cost, and opportunities to improve care.

ACG System Users Can Leverage These New Features to:

• Group individuals into health needs across their entire population (segmentation)
• Use Care Modifiers to identify actionable opportunities
• Develop and deploy population health programs to meet segment-specific needs
• Track segment-level performance trends
• Identify high-need, high-cost patients

Take a deeper dive into the new PNG functionality by clicking here.

Additions to Pharmacy Suite

Finally, we’ve added several novel enhancements to the ACG System’s pharmacy capabilities.

Medication Complexity Scores (MCS): A single measure of the complexity of a patient’s medicine regimen, reflecting how difficult it is to adhere to prescribed medications. The MCS quantifies the total number of medications and complexities associated with a patient’s unique medication list and identifies patients who may benefit from a comprehensive medication review or other clinical pharmacist service. This measure is a brand new concept, based on years of Johns Hopkins research, and is available exclusively within the ACG System.

Rx-MG Additions: Four new categories have been added that more accurately reflect recent advances in infection prevention and hematology. In this release, there are specific categories for medications related to HIV prevention, Sickle Cell, Non-Iron Deficiency Anemia, and Anti-Parasitic Drugs.

Proximal Active Ingredient Count: You asked, and we answered! Designed in response to user requests for a shorter-term view of polypharmacy, this new marker allows for a view of the past 120 days.

These are just a few of the highlights from the soon-to-be-released ACG System v13.0. If you have any questions or want to learn more about the ACG System, please visit HopkinsACG.org or email acginfo@jh.edu.