Integrated Data Platform Improves the Effectiveness of State-wide COVID-19 Surveillance

The Ohio Health Information Partnership (OHIP) was using its technology to share individual COVID-19 test results to providers at the bedside. The State Department of Health approached OHIP with a request to aid the state by providing a more comprehensive data set for COVID-19. Using the Health Catalyst^® Data Operating System (DOS™) platform, OHIP has improved the effectiveness of public health reporting and COVID-19 surveillance.

HAS 20 Virtual: Reimaging the Healthcare Conference

The future of healthcare is here, with its focus on data sharing, technological pushes forward, and virtual work wherever possible. We are excited to embrace the adventure and challenge of these changes by reimagining the Healthcare Analytics Summit (HAS) 2020 as a virtual format that will be unlike any other healthcare conference you may have attended, virtual or otherwise. HAS 20 Virtual takes place September 1-3, 2020 and will feature nationally recognized keynote speakers, educational breakout sessions, and many of the unique touches you’ve come to expect from HAS.

Population Builder Makes Data Available to the Masses

Renown Health’s data were contained in disparate sources, delaying access to data, and resulting in different data definitions and interpretations of data. Renown Health integrated its data, creating one source of truth for the organization with the Health Catalyst® Data Operating System (DOS™), enabling it to deliver timely, quality care, which is especially needful to address the COVID-19 pandemic.

What Health Systems Need to Know About COVID-19 Relief Funding

During the emergency phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, almost half of all U.S. healthcare consumers postponed routine and non-emergent care, leaving organization with significant revenue loss across all care settings. In response to the widespread financial strain on the healthcare industry, Congress has allocated $100 billion in relief funding for hospitals and other healthcare providers. But while providers clearly need the financial relief, using it (including navigating terms and conditions and eligibility) has been less straightforward. Better understanding of these relief programs and compliance requirements will help organizations confidently optimize this assistance.

Introducing the Care Management Suite: A Data-Driven, Transparent Solution

COVID-19 has highlighted the healthcare imperative of effective care management—in particular, the ability for health systems to rapidly adapt their care management approach based on ever-changing healthcare terrain. Typical care management programs lack transparency, comprehensive data, and flexibility. This makes it difficult for care teams to easily change their care management programs based on patient population needs and opportunities. To meet these challenges, the Health Catalyst Care Management Suite leverages a transparent, data-driven strategy with expertise to help health systems maximize care management ROI.

The Medicare Shared Savings Program: Four Tools for Better Profit Margins and High-Quality Care

Medicare patients make up the majority of health systems’ revenue; yet, organizations earn only a one percent profit while caring for this population. Despite historically low profit margins, Medicare can be lucrative for health systems, and through the Medicare Shared Savings Program, healthcare organizations can increase revenue with four tools:

1. The ability to aggregate and analyze data.
2. The ability to align financial incentives between payers and providers.
3. The ability to engage patients in behavior or lifestyle modifications.
4. The ability to garner support from clinicians and encourage them to lead the shift to VBC.

As the shift from fee-for-service to value-based care continues, health systems can leverage MSSP to deliver the highest level of care while also increasing profit margins.

What Health Systems Need to Know About COVID-19 Relief Funding

During the emergency phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, almost half of all U.S. healthcare consumers postponed routine and non-emergent care, leaving organization with significant revenue loss across all care settings. In response to the widespread financial strain on the healthcare industry, Congress has allocated $100 billion in relief funding for hospitals and other healthcare providers. But while providers clearly need the financial relief, using it (including navigating terms and conditions and eligibility) has been less straightforward. Better understanding of these relief programs and compliance requirements will help organizations confidently optimize this assistance.

Cross-State Nurse Licensing: One Way to Improve Care During COVID-19

The rapid onset of COVID-19 has strained hospital resources, including workforce management. Qualified nurses have responded to the virus and volunteered in the hardest hit areas, but many have been prohibited from helping due to cross-state nurse licensing laws that don’t allow nurses to deliver care across state lines. As health systems continue to face current and emerging needs due to the virus—addressing required training, knowledge, and experience—state licensing laws that would allow nurses to provide care in other states is a critical part of the conversation. Cross-state licensure will not only alleviate the burden placed on health systems and its workforce during a pandemic but also help organizations prepare future unforeseen challenges.

Implicit Bias Training Helps Eliminate Healthcare Disparities

From hospitals and clinics to data warehousing companies, overcoming implicit biases with the help of up-to-date data can improve patient care and team member equity. Allina Health and Health Catalyst used data to discover that implicit biases existed within their companies. At Allina Health, these implicit biases proved to be a barrier to patient care. They negatively impacted patient access to important resources like hospice care. At Health Catalyst, the leadership team realized there was a lack of women in leadership positions and a general lack of diversity in the technology sector. Leadership teams at both organizations invested in creating implicit bias trainings to equip team members with tools to overcome their biases.

Improved Patient Scheduling Enhances Care and Boosts Revenue by $8.3M

The amount of time a patient may have to wait for a scheduled appointment at Texas Children’s Hospital varied greatly as a result of a lack of standardized processes. After taking a deeper look at its scheduling process with the help of analytics, it was able to develop an improvement strategy aimed at improving access to care—enhancing patient care and boosting revenue.

Introducing the New Care Management Suite: A Comprehensive, Data-driven Approach

In this webinar, we’ll share the current state of the care management landscape and discuss trends from across the country that highlight risk model biases, the impacts of COVID-19, and the importance of evaluating program ROI. Our Care Management Suite has the capabilities and flexibility to adjust to the ever-changing health environment by identifying the most impactable patients, supporting the entire clinical care pathway, and optimizing program ROI and profitability. During this webinar, attendees will learn how our solution does the following:

• Provides a rich, more comprehensive data set—including the ability to look across a wide variety of data sources combining clinical and claims data.
• Offers a patient-centric view—optimized for care management workflows.
• Supports a wide range of analytic capabilities—algorithm transparency and flexibility enabling users to confidently explain, demonstrate, and continuously optimize care management processes.

Activity-Based Costing in Healthcare During COVID-19: Meeting Four Critical Needs

As health systems increasingly transition to a value-based care model, the financial strains and uncertainty of COVID-19 have placed more urgency on cost management. More than ever, organizations need a costing solution that helps them understand the true value of their services. With the right next-generation activity-based costing (ABC) tool, health systems can access the detailed data they need to lower the cost of care, automate costing activities, and reduce administrative costs while preparing for the mounting intricacy of the post-pandemic setting. Activity-based costing meets healthcare’s complex COVID-19-era costing needs by addressing four big challenges:

1. Data management.
2. Scalability.
3. Ongoing maintenance.
4. Adoption.

Real World Analytics: Advancing Methods and Literacy in Healthcare

Join Adam Wilcox, PhD, Chief Analytics Officer for University of Washington Medicine and Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Health Education at the University of Washington, and Dale Sanders, Chief Technology Officer at Health Catalyst, as they discuss the importance of improving methods for applying healthcare analytics in the real world. Adam and Dale have been friends and colleagues for 22 years, and combined, have over 50 years of experience in the field. Adam will walk through real-world examples of analysis problems, including emerging lessons from COVID-19, and Dale will offer commentary and facilitate questions. Together, they will suggest changes in healthcare to raise our analytic methods and literacy. In this webinar, Adam and Dale will talk about the following:

• Important changes in healthcare that directly affect our approach to analytics.
• Methods for improving analytics in healthcare.
• Understanding factors that make a difference in what we see in the data.
• Early observations about the data challenges of COVID-19.

Beginning the Conversation: Health Equity

Equity impacts the fabric of society down to the type and quality of healthcare different racial and ethnic patient populations receive. COVID-19 has underscored disparities in healthcare delivery in the United States, as the pandemic has disproportionately affected the nation’s black communities. To care for and recognize the value of all individuals, healthcare must leverage data and analytics to better understand patient populations by race and ethnicity and determine how to meet the needs of its underserved populations.

Weekly News Roundup: June 12, 2020

This week, the CDC issued interim guidelines for antibody testing in clinical and public health settings, which will be used for monitoring and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. But, antibody tests may be raising more questions than they're answering. In this week's news roundup: why the CDC says "less than half" of antibody tests may be correct; why immunity to COVID-19 is so complicated; maps and dashboards show new coronavirus hotspots and reopening dates; and more.

Analytics Improves Population Health and Drives Efficiencies

agilon health, an organization that partners with physician organizations in full risk contracts, needed a way to help its physician partners and care management staff quickly identify patients in danger of deteriorating health status and increased cost. However, taking a deeper look at the health status and costs associated with these patients was complicated by the slow manual review of data. By developing an analytics application, agilon health was able to turn its data into actionable insights, automate many manual processes, and ultimately provide targeted improvement interventions aimed at better care delivery.

Virtual Visits and Analytics Enable Continued Delivery of Ambulatory Services During COVID-19 Pandemic

With the emergence of COVID-19, Texas Children’s Hospital was challenged to make data-informed decisions that would allow it to continue offering critically needed healthcare services, while ensuring the safety of its patients, staff, and providers. Texas Children’s dramatically expanded telehealth capacity, converting most in-person primary, specialty, and mental healthcare visits to a phone or video appointment to better meet patient needs. The organization leveraged the Health Catalyst® Data Operating System (DOS™) platform and a virtual health platform to visualize, monitor, and manage the conversion to virtual health, in addition to managing in-person visit volume—enabling the effective management of outpatient capacity, utilization, and financial performance.

How to Scale Telehealth Solutions to Increase Patient Access During COVID-19

As health systems have faced a drop in routine, non-emergent patient care due to the novel coronavirus, they have had to be flexible and find new methods of care delivery to ensure patient access. Telehealth—using a digital platform to conduct are remotely—benefits both patients and health systems. Although laying the groundwork for telehealth and then scaling telehealth solutions is challenging, virtual care leads to increased patient access, better patient retention, and overall reduced costs for health systems, employers, and patients. With the right tools to build a reliable framework, organizations can effectively deliver quality care to patient populations, no matter where they live.

Weekly News Roundup: June 5, 2020

This week, the CDC issued interim guidelines for antibody testing in clinical and public health settings, which will be used for monitoring and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. But, antibody tests may be raising more questions than they're answering. In this week's news roundup: why the CDC says "less than half" of antibody tests may be correct; why immunity to COVID-19 is so complicated; maps and dashboards show new coronavirus hotspots and reopening dates; and more.

A Complete Guide to MIPS Quality Measures

This comprehensive guide includes 12 frequently asked questions about Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) quality measures. This guide will help increase your understanding of MIPS quality measures so you can choose the best quality measures for your team. Find answers to your questions, including:

• Where can I find a list of MIPS quality measures?
• What are specialty measure sets and how do they categorize MIPS quality measures?
• What are submission methods for MIPS quality measures?
• How are benchmarks used to score your performance in MIPS quality measures?
• What is the burden of different MIPS quality measures?