"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

2009 provided Cielo with 100% growth, the third year of triple-digit growth by our company.  Of course, we're proud of that.  But more so, we're proud of what our customers are doing with Cielo Clinic - high-performing patient-centered medical homes, great increases in care quality, stronger pay-for-performance reimbursements.  This is the greatest testament we share on the power of our product. Dave Morin Co-Founder and CEO Cielo MedSolutions LLC

We have begun work on our recently awarded grant from the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute in partnership with the University of Michigan Health System Department of Family Medicine. In this six month project we will be: 1. Investigating how, in existing implementations, Cielo Clinic impacts prevention and chronic disease care by examining changes in care delivery and clinical workflow, documenting the impact on patient, clinician and office staff satisfaction, gathering feedback from current end-users and researching current and future needs with regards to clinical quality improvement in primary and ambulatory care. 2. Designing a prototype of a next-generation clinical quality management system that is affordable and adoptable, built upon the principles of Cielo Clinic and tracks and manages activities and outcomes at all stages including screening, prevention, diagnosis and treatment, involving all care delivery participants, including patients and non-office care-givers, and delivers proactive prompts and reminders to clinicians regarding required services. This is a very significant R&D opportunity for Cielo that will result in a state-of-the-art system that takes clinical quality management to a new level. Dave Morin CEO Cielo MedSolutions

As of late, I've been on a lot sales calls pertaining to the immediate need for a "chronic disease management system" or a "registry". It's great to see that providers and practices are finding they need technology like ours (Cielo Clinic). But, I'm seeing two consistent issues in the approach to selecting a system that concern me. First is the inability of the prospective customer to document the true clinical and/or business problem to be solved (ensure providers maintain compliance with evidence-based guidelines, build a database of actionable clinical information to improve quality or increase the efficiency of a patient visit, as examples). The problem certainly is not the need for more technology systems to support! What we normally hear is " my payor said I need a registry to participate in their pay-for-performance program". Yes, if your payor says you need a system and there is financial incentive to do it, you should find one. But, what are the goals of the pay-for-performance program? What system features do you need to support these goals? What is required from the system to fit into your workflow and be usable by providers and staff? What do you need to ensure your solution takes you into the future (in other words, "what's next"?). What do you need to track and report on? Second is the assumption that the technology, by vitrue of its implementation, is the solution to the problem. The overlay of a technology on a workflow that can't take advantage of it, support it or understand it is a classic recipe for more problems. The technology is not the solution, it's the effective use of the technology that brings the benefit. These issues transcend health care - as a former technology consultant I've seen these same issues in a variety of industries. I've also seen the disappointment of many a technology purchaser when they find their system doesn't meet their needs, frustrates their staff and just leads to more cost. Cielo Clinic delivers a wealth of benefits to a primary care practice. When we call on you, tell us what you true clinical and business needs are; we love to discuss and analyze them and we are confident we will meet them! Dave Morin CEO Cielo MedSolutions

Our newly-formed Strategic Alliance with Altarum is exciting. Altarum is a world-class organization devoted to solving complex health system problems and our goal of increasing the quality-of-care provided in primary care certainly falls under the "complex" category! The roots of our flagship product, Cielo Clinic, lie in research and development completed at the University of Michigan Department of Family Medicine around the complex issue of driving change in the quality of care delivered by primary care providers. This is a wonderful alignment of interests and is going to result in stronger Cielo technology solutions and products that improve the quality of care delivered by providers, in a manner that is affordable and adoptable by physicians while delivering benefits to all stakeholders; providers, payers and patients. Stay tuned to see what develops. We're confident that this will further the innovation you will see come from Cielo. Dave Morin CEO Cielo MedSolutions