Three Strategies to Deliver Patient-Centered Care in the Next Normal

Juggling financial demands, uncertain healthcare legislation, and COVID-19 can distract healthcare leaders from the most important aspect of care—patients. Delivering patient-centered care in this volatile market can be challenging, especially when traditional healthcare methods (e.g., in-person visits) are on hold. These sudden disruptions to routine care have highlighted the importance of keeping patients at the center of care, whether care delivery is in-person or virtual. Health systems can manage competing priorities, adjust to pandemic-induced changes, and deliver patient-centered care by focusing on three strategies:

1. Improve the patient experience.
2. Implement the Meaningful Measures Initiative.
3. Transition in-person visits to virtual.

Innovative Healthcare Partnerships: Making the Most of Merging Resources and Capabilities

Healthcare mergers and acquisitions performed solidly in 2020, despite the downturn in the U.S. economy and healthcare in general. Organizations responded to new challenges by partnering with each other to build core business strengths, address gaps in care delivery the pandemic exposed, and enhance their resources to navigate current and future crises. Realizing the potential of emerging healthcare partnerships requires an open and scalable analytics infrastructure plus a cultural and contractual openness to allow innovation to flourish. Organizations that have adopted an open analytics platform have the data operating advantage to form partnerships, efficiently and smoothly bring best-of-breed solutions to market, and enable the innovative potential of collaborations.

Efficient Exchange of Data Improves Alternate Care Site Patient Transfers Increasing Capacity for COVID-19 Surge

Paso Del Norte Health Information Exchange (PHIX) and Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) sought to improve data exchange to support safe, effective transfer of patients to alternative care sites. PHIX and HCA leveraged the Health Catalyst Interoperability Suite to provide clinicians a comprehensive view of a patient’s clinical history. Clinicians now have immediate access to the critical patient data required for a safe, efficient patient transfer.

2021 Healthcare Trends: What Leaders Need to Know from COVID-19 to New Administration Policies

While much of the healthcare industry was eager to put 2020 behind it, the new year brings its own challenges, concerns, and promises. Trends in the three main categories of new Biden administration policy, care delivery, and healthcare technology will shape 2021, with key issues including the long-term effects of COVID-19, future emergency preparedness, and the outlook for the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Healthcare leaders can prepare for this pivotal year by understanding critical areas to watch within these categories and how events, activities, and political appointments will affect the healthcare ecosystem.

Shifting to Value-Based Care: Four Strategies Emphasize Agility

As the healthcare payment shift from fee-for-service (FFS) to value-based reimbursement takes longer than expected, health systems must balance existing volume-based models with a growing emphasis on value. Organizations are in different phases of the journey from volume to value, and policies continue to evolve. In response, the industry’s best stance is to sustain FFS revenue while following guidelines and strategies to be increasingly ready for value. Organizations can use four methods to remain agile as they navigate the limbo between volume and value:

1. Understand the first ten years of value-based care and prepare for what’s next.
2. Identify essential strategies for shifting from volume to value.
3. Leverage the Medicare Shared Savings Program.
4. Use population health management as a path to value.

How to Build a Healthcare Data Quality Coalition to Optimize Decision Making

Healthcare data-informed decision making’s complexity and consequences demand the highest-quality data—a relationship that COVID-19 has amplified. Decision-making challenges associated with pandemic-driven urgency, variety of data, and a lack of resources have made it more critical than ever that organization’s build a data quality coalition and strategy to ensure systemwide data is fit for purpose. Having the people, processes, and technology necessary to define, evaluate, and monitor data quality allows for a quick, effective, and sustained response at an organizational scale. The coalition keeps all resources working together on the task at hand within a well-defined structure.

Data Science Reveals Patients at Risk for Adverse Outcomes Due to COVID-19 Care Disruptions

One of the biggest challenges health systems have faced since the onset of COVID-19 is the disruption to routine care. These care disruptions, such as halted routine checkups and primary care visits, place some patients at a higher risk for adverse outcomes. Health systems can rely on data science, based on past care disruption, to identify vulnerable patients and the short- and long-term effects these care disruptions could have on their health. Data science can also inform the care team which care disruptions to address first. With comprehensive information about care disruption on patients, health systems can apply the right interventions before it’s too late.

COVID-19 Capacity Planning Tool Provides Advanced Analytics and Improved Operational Effectiveness

COVID-19 is causing many hospitals and health systems to face resource and capacity restrictions, making the accurate estimation of COVID-19 requirements crucial. Carle Health System needed the ability to anticipate the impact COVID-19 would have on its organization and community. After analyzing national COVID-19 capacity planning resources, Carle chose a model that was customized for its organization. Carle leveraged its analytics platform and data science tools, using local data and infection rates to forecast the impact of COVID-19 locally. The organization now has critical insight into when surges will occur and can determine if it has enough available resources.

The Key to Better Healthcare Decision Making

When healthcare leaders make data-driven decisions, they often think they see the same thing in the data and assume they’re drawing the same conclusions. However, decision makers often discover later that they were looking at the data differently and didn’t derive the same insights, leading to ineffective and unsustainable choices. Healthcare leaders can manage differing data interpretations by using statistical process control (SPC) methodology to find focus, avoid divergent data interpretations, make better decisions, and monitor change for a sustainable future. By deriving concise insights, SPC separates the signal from the noise, augmenting leaders’ decision-making capabilities.

2021 Healthcare Trends: What Leaders Need to Know from COVID-19 to New Administration Policies (White Paper)

While much of the healthcare industry was eager to put 2020 behind it, the new year brings its own challenges, concerns, and promises. Trends in the three main categories of new Biden administration policy, care delivery, and healthcare technology will shape 2021, with key issues including the long-term effects of COVID-19, future emergency preparedness, and the outlook for the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Healthcare leaders can prepare for this pivotal year by understanding critical areas to watch within these categories and how events, activities, and political appointments will affect the healthcare ecosystem.

Healthcare Consumerism and Cost: Dispelling the Myth of Price Transparency

Join Deb Gordon, seasoned healthcare executive and author of the book, “The Health Care Consumer’s Manifesto: How to Get the Most for Your Money,” and Pat Rocap, Director of Cost Management Services at Health Catalyst, as they examine the importance of understanding the relationship between cost and pricing as the path to transparency for consumers. Deb and Pat will provide expert analysis and practical advice to help you become a savvier provider and consumer when it comes to healthcare pricing and spending.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Healthcare: Four Real-World Improvements

As COVID-19 has strained health systems clinically, operationally, and financially, advanced data science capabilities have emerged as highly valuable pandemic resources. Organizations use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to better understand COVID-19 and other health conditions, patient populations, operational and financial challenges, and more—insights that are supporting pandemic response and recovery as well as ongoing healthcare delivery. Meanwhile, improved data science adoption guidelines are making implementation of capabilities such as AI and ML more accessible and actionable, allowing organizations to achieve meaningful short-term improvements and prepare for an emergency-ready future.

The Three Essential Responsibilities of a Nurse Informaticist

With data driving decisions at every level of a health system, healthcare organizations must have data experts who can understand and communicate the technological processes and the reasons behind them to clinical staff. Nurse informaticists bridge the gap between data and nursing practice by combining clinical experience and data expertise. They fulfill three pivotal responsibilities:

1. Understand and communicate the “why” behind new processes.
2. Implement new processes.
3. Validate data quality.

With a nurse informaticist guiding data-driven processes, educating nurses, and validating data quality, health systems advance data beyond the data platform so it reaches the nursing workforce to inform decisions at the frontlines of healthcare delivery.

Population Health Analytics Enables Improved Quality Increasing Revenue by Nearly $1M

Advanced payment models incentivize Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) to deliver high-quality care and close gaps in care for members, thereby earning shared savings and increasing profits. However, in order to succeed and identify gaps in care, ACOs must be able to rely on solid data and analytics to avoid losing income that could be invested back into patient care. Utilizing its analytics platform and a quality measures solution has allowed Hospital Sisters Health System to close care gaps, improve ACO quality measures performance, and enhance reporting accuracy and effectiveness.

Why Data-Driven Healthcare Is the Best Defense Against COVID-19

COVID-19 has given data-driven healthcare the opportunity to prove its value on the national and global stages. Health systems, researchers, and policymakers have leveraged data to drive critical decisions from short-term emergency response to long-term recovery planning. Five areas of pandemic response and recovery stand out for their robust use of data and measurable impact on the course of the outbreak and the individuals and frontline providers at its center:

1. Scaling the hospital command center to pandemic proportions.
2. Meeting patient surge demands on hospital capacity.
3. Controlling disease spread.
4. Fueling global research.
5. Responding to financial strain.

Cloud Cybersecurity: Strategies for Managing Vendor Risk

As more organizations shift away from on-premise architectures toward the cloud or hybrid hosting models, critical cybersecurity concerns emerge. Organizations, especially health systems, should carefully examine the shared responsibility model in partnership with their cloud vendor. Join Kevin Scharnhorst, Health Catalyst Chief Information Security Officer, as he shares perspectives on how your organization’s security program, through adherence to standards-based policy and procedures, can align with your cloud vendor on reduced organizational risk.

2021 Changes to the Quality Payment Program: Must-Know Guidelines for ACOs

In 2021, CMS proposes the following four key changes to the Quality Payment Program (QPP) that will impact quality measurement for ACOs and ACO participants:

1. The discontinuation of the CMS Web Interface.
2. The introduction of the alternative payment model (APM) Performance Pathway (APP).
3. The discontinuation of the APM scoring card.
4. The addition of the APM entity as a submitter type for MIPS.

Each change will create new challenges for ACOs and ACO participants. Organizations can successfully navigate these shifts by partnering with a robust quality measures solution that creates a complete picture by combining comprehensive data and measures information in performance visualizations. An inclusive quality measures solution also creates a thorough workflow by combining the monitoring and improving processes, then submitting performance to payers.

Healthcare Process Improvement: Six Strategies for Organizationwide Transformation

Healthcare processes drive activities and outcomes across the health system, from emergency department admissions and procedures to billing and discharge. Furthermore, in the COVID-19 era’s uncertainty, process quality is an increasingly important driver in care delivery and organizational success. Given this broad scope of impact, process improvement is intrinsically linked to better outcomes and lower costs. Six strategies for healthcare process improvement illustrate the roles of strategy, skillsets, culture, and advanced analytics in healthcare’s continuing mission of transformation.

Solutions to the New Challenges Facing ACOs and ACO Participants from the 2021 QPP Final Rule

This webinar thoroughly explains four key changes in the 2021 Quality Payment Program (QPP) Final Rule: the discontinuation of the CMS Web Interface, the introduction of the Alternative Payment Model (APM) Performance Pathway (APP), the discontinuation of the APM scoring standard, and the expanded use of the APM entity submitter type. These changes create eight new challenges in quality measurement for ACOs in the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) and ACO participants in the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS).

The Healthcare Cybersecurity Framework: A Top Defense Against Data Breaches and Attacks

Between 2017 and 2020, more than 93 percent of healthcare organizations experienced a data breach. While digital technology and connectivity is increasingly critical in meeting operational and clinical challenges, such as COVID-19, more integration also enables increased exposure to cyberattacks that can impact care delivery, safety, and privacy. In response to healthcare’s significant and growing cybersecurity threats, vendor organizations and their health system partners need a security framework. A defensible protocol holds vendors accountable to routine audits and compliance measures at a regular cadence, ensuring both parties keep cybersecurity programs active and optimized.