AI-Powered Benchmarking Transforms Data into Insight, Improving Organizational Effectiveness

Article Summary


Healthcare organizations have a vast amount of data available. Data need to be converted into better decisions regarding organizational focus, resource allocation, and setting and driving toward appropriate targets to optimize performance. Beyond significant data integration and transformation, optimal leadership decisions require a broad perspective and cutting-edge analytics.

Previously, INTEGRIS Health had high volumes of data but lacked the insight it wanted to drive performance. By leveraging a robust analytics platform, INTEGRIS Health now has more comprehensive and better-integrated data coupled with the cutting-edge analytics it needs to make critical leadership decisions and drive daily performance.

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Featured Outcomes
  • Leveraging Touchstone®, INTEGRIS Health has a deep understanding of its performance and a unified vision of quality, enabling the organization to focus on opportunities to improve outcomes and organizational performance. Rather than reacting to delayed performance data, the organization is proactively pursuing improvement.
  • Data are refreshed 50x faster than what INTEGRIS Health had before and the benchmarks themselves are both more adaptive and detailed.
  • The organization has saved $500K annually by sunsetting a third-party benchmarking tool.

Healthcare organizations have a vast amount of data available. Data need to be converted into better decisions regarding organizational focus, resource allocation, and setting and driving toward appropriate targets to optimize performance. Beyond significant data integration and transformation, optimal leadership decisions require a broad perspective and cutting-edge analytics.

Previously, INTEGRIS Health had high volumes of data but lacked the insight it wanted to drive performance. By leveraging a robust analytics platform, INTEGRIS Health now has more comprehensive and better-integrated data coupled with the cutting-edge analytics it needs to make critical leadership decisions and drive daily performance.

BOUNDLESS DATA AVAILABLE TO HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATIONS

Healthcare organizations have access to more data than ever before but often lack the actionable insights required for improvement. Organizations that want to improve performance must translate data into knowledge and integrate cutting-edge analytics into daily operations.1

IMPROVED PERFORMANCE REQUIRES MORE THAN VAST DATA

INTEGRIS Health had a healthcare benchmarking tool, but the tool failed to transform data into knowledge that could be used to improve operations and outcomes. Data latency of up to one year for value-based care measures limited the organization’s ability to make data-informed decisions.

When INTEGRIS Health gained access to more robust data, it was overwhelming and difficult to determine how to best use the data for improvement. The available data made discerning signals through the noise challenging. As a result, the organization was often compelled to follow up on all data rather than focus on specific opportunity areas.

INTEGRIS Health was drowning in data but lacked insight about performance and opportunities for improvement. It needed a solution that consolidated information from disparate systems, provided timely data for targeted improvement, and benchmarked performance against peers and other customized cohorts.

HEALTHCARE BENCHMARKING REVEALS OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT

INTEGRIS Health leveraged the Health Catalyst® Data Operating System (DOS™) platform and a robust suite of analytics applications, including Touchstone® Suite and Healthcare.AI™, to establish a single source of truth across its disparate systems and gain powerful insight into performance. Touchstone is a benchmarking asset that uses artificial intelligence to proactively identify where an organization is performing well and where it is underperforming so that organizations can prioritize and drive towards improvement.

INTEGRIS Health uses the risk-adjusted benchmarks to understand performance both within the organization and relative to its peers, perform opportunity analyses, establish improvement priorities, allocate resources, and drive improvement targets in its daily operations. The organization uses the scoring system in Touchstone to compare the INTEGRIS Health system and each of its 11 hospitals to similar-type organizations and customized cohorts.

The organization now has integrated data, analytics, and machine learning-driven algorithms to identify real opportunities to improve value-based care-measure performance, patient safety, and mortality. For the first time, INTEGRIS Health has access to timely, actionable data to address quality issues. Effective healthcare benchmarking has revealed strengths and opportunities and uncovered some surprising insights. For example, heart failure readmissions had been a high-priority target for improvement, but INTEGRIS Health performed well compared to peer benchmarks. In contrast, sepsis readmissions had been overlooked and have now become a focus.

The organization benchmarks clinicians to facilitate the triage of case reviews and make clinician-to-clinician comparisons to discern variation, enabling the organization to pinpoint specific improvement opportunities. These clinician-to-clinician comparisons also identify high performers and help determine the best practices that can be spread across the organization to accelerate improvement. The timely, transparent, and specific data offered by Touchstone have provided INTEGRIS Health the opportunity to improve the accuracy of and trust in clinical documentation and coding as well as performance reporting.

RESULTS

By utilizing DOS, Touchstone, and Healthcare.AI, INTEGRIS Health has established a single source of truth across its disparate systems, gaining powerful insight into performance. The integration of cutting-edge analytics into its daily operations has transformed the organization.

  • Senior leadership has the integrated data and analytics required to develop the strategic course for the organization effectively.
  • It now has a deep understanding of its performance and a unified vision of quality, enabling the organization to focus on opportunities to improve outcomes and organizational performance. Rather than reacting to delayed performance data, the organization is proactively pursuing improvement.
  • Data are refreshed 50x faster than what INTEGRIS Health had before, and the benchmarks themselves are both more adaptive and detailed.
  • Leveraging Touchstone for benchmarking has increased INTEGRIS Health data scientists’ ability to support better focus, resource allocation, and target setting.
  • The organization has saved $500K annually by sunsetting a third-party benchmarking tool.

“Using DOS and Touchstone has been transformational for our organization. The data and analytics are exactly what our CEO, CMO, and CNE need to set our organization’s course. We’ve effectively separated signals from noise in the data and are able to see where the organization needs to go clearly.”

– Benjamin Mansalis, MD, Chief Information Officer, INTEGRIS Health

WHAT’S NEXT

INTEGRIS Health is further accelerating the power inherent in its data by deploying the Health Catalyst CORUS® Suite, a manufacturing-style, activity-based costing solution that provides a comprehensive view of real costs, enabling the organization to surface even more opportunities to improve outcomes and organizational performance.

REFERENCES

  1. Ginsburg, P., Loera-Brust, A., Brandt, C., & Durak, A. (2018). The opportunities and challenges of data analytics in health care. Brookings Institution. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-opportunities-and-challenges-of-data-analytics-in-health-care/
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