Improving the Transparency of Physician Compensation in Value-Based Care

Healthcare reimbursement continues to shift away from fee-for-service reimbursement models to value-based, risk-sharing agreements. This shift has resulted in organizations revising compensation strategies to engage physicians in value-based compensation arrangements. An effective value-based physician compensation plan is critically important, particularly in competitive environments where organizations must optimize the ability to recruit and retain highly skilled providers. One commonly used physician compensation approach includes a base salary and productivity incentives, coupled with additional compensation opportunities for achieving quality and service goals. The physician compensation package at John Muir Health is not only competitive, it is also complex, but the support process was burdensome, inefficient, and lacked transparency.

John Muir Health developed a plan to leverage the Health Catalyst^® Analytics Platform, including the Late-Binding™ Data Warehouse and broad suite of analytics applications, to develop an automated process for physician compensation. The plan created efficiencies in time and effort across multiple domains and produced software to automate future work. The benefits included:

• Saving 1,560 hours of time required to produce the data necessary to calculate physician compensation.
• Successfully integrating more than ten different compensation models and 20 different data elements for more than 300 different providers into the physician compensation analytic application, automating the process.

How Allina Engaged Clinicians and Analytics to Improve Influenza Vaccination Rate

Influenza, a contagious respiratory illness spread by droplets, can lead to hospitalization and even death. Millions of people get influenza each year, hundreds of thousands are hospitalized, and thousands to tens of thousands die from influenza related causes each year. The key to preventing a devastating outbreak is vaccinating enough people that an outbreak is unlikely.

When Allina Health identified that its own rates for influenza vaccination were lower than desired, the health system studied data gleaned from its EHR and an Analytics Platform from Health Catalyst, which includes a Late-Binding™ Enterprise Data Warehouse and broad suite of analytics applications, to understand its true current vaccination performance. The data revealed that changes were in order, which Allina put in place through clinician feedback, engagement, and education.

Results:

• 4.8 percentage point improvement in influenza vaccination rate, exceeding the Healthy People 2020 goals for vaccination.

Combatting Opioid Abuse with Data-Driven Prescription Reduction

Each day, 91 Americans die from an opioid overdose. Historically, illegal opioids, such as heroin, were the primary contributing factor to overdoses. Today, it is well understood that a driving force for opioid abuse is prescriptions, which contribute significantly to the overdose epidemic.

Following a series of adverse outcomes related to opioid misuse within the community, Allina Health sought to evaluate how it managed acute non-cancer pain in the outpatient setting, particularly among opioid-naïve patients. By leveraging the Health Catalyst Analytics Platform, including the Late-Binding™ Data Warehouse and broad suite of analytics applications, Allina Health obtained data on prescribing patterns and identified several opportunities to reduce the number of opioids prescribed.

Results:

• 980,527 fewer opioid pills prescribed in the outpatient setting in 2016, a 12 percent relative reduction.
• 1,079 fewer patients (with acute or chronic pain) receiving eight or more opioid pill prescriptions over 12 months, a 10.3 percent relative reduction.
• 13,391 fewer patients receiving opioid prescriptions for more than 20 pills, a 13 percent relative reduction.

Successfully Sustaining Sepsis Outcomes

Increasingly, high-functioning healthcare organizations are recognizing the challenge of sustaining results following successful clinical improvement initiatives. Sepsis is a major driver of mortality in the U.S. In fact, it is estimated that up to half of all hospital deaths are linked to sepsis. After executing a successful strategy to improve outcomes for patients with sepsis, Piedmont Healthcare was determined to sustain those critical reductions in mortality, length of stay, and cost.

The health system “hardwired” process changes into the EHR, monitored performance compliance via a well-developed analytics application, and fostered strong leadership on the frontlines to champion a culture of continuous improvement. In the second year of its latest sepsis improvement effort, Piedmont was able to not only sustain, but also to further improve upon its first-year improvement results.

Second-year results:

• 14.2 percent reduction in mortality for severe sepsis and septic shock translating to 68 lives saved in one year.
• 30.7 percent improvement in number of patients receiving calculated fluid target.
• $1.2 million saved in one year from decreased variable cost.

Enhancing Mental Health Care Transitions Reduces Unnecessary Costly Readmissions

Nationally, hospitalization for persons with mental health disorders has increased faster than hospitalization for any other condition. Of concern is the lack of bed space to intake these patients on a timely basis. In Minnesota, for example, more than 50 percent of available state psychiatric beds were closed between 2005 and 2010. Furthermore, readmission rates for patients with mood disorders is higher than any other mental health condition, with 15 percent readmitted within 30 days of hospital discharge and up to 22.4 percent of patients with schizophrenia being readmitted. While the average cost of a readmission in the U.S. is approximately $7,200, of greater concern is hospital readmission represents poor patient outcomes related to lack of adequate access to community mental health resources and challenges with adherence to care plans needed to prevent chronic relapse.

In response to these challenges, Allina Health put a new care transition process in place, redesigned workflow, and added key patient support roles. To measure the effectiveness of new interventions, Allina relied on the Health Catalyst Analytics Platform, which includes the Late-Binding™ Enterprise Data Warehouse and a broad suite of analytics applications.

Results:

• 27 percent relative reduction in potentially preventable readmission rate.
• 80 percent patient retention rate in established outpatient mental health services.

Driving Strategic Advantage Through Widespread Analytics Adoption

With the current state of uncertainty facing healthcare organizations, survival requires unprecedented agility when it comes to acquiring and responding to meaningful, strategic information. After adopting the Health Catalyst Analytics Platform, including the Late-Binding™ Data Warehouse and broad suite of analytics applications, Partners HealthCare promoted a philosophy of expanded access to the enterprise data warehouse (EDW) to increase adoption and self-service analytics to improve patient care and outcomes.

Partners needed widespread adoption of the EDW so that information could be meaningfully incorporated into strategic, clinical and operational decision making to support patient care. This meant that users who had a legitimate need to access data to support their job function were encouraged to seek access to the EDW. The organization continues to focus on further increasing the effectiveness of this strategy by ensuring that users have the means to acquire the skills, knowledge, and support they need to effectively use data stored in the EDW.

Results:

• 243 percent increase in user base—achieved over a two-year period (700+ unique users).
• More data available to a broader audience than ever before.
• Physician time to access data reduced from weeks to clicks.
• 87 percent of user community satisfied with the effectiveness of communication provided to support their use of the EDW.

Data-Driven Process Improvement Raises Patient Safety for Highest-Risk Medication

Intravenous (IV) heparin is widely used to prevent thrombosis in a variety of clinical settings, yet it is considered one of the highest-risk medications used in the inpatient setting because of the potential for dosing errors. Allina Health identified multiple IV heparin protocols among its hospitals, a variation that increased the risk of errors. Standard practices that addressed patients’ clinical needs in a disease-specific way were lacking. Over the course of 1.5 years, more than 9,000 patients at Allina Health had an IV heparin protocol ordered, so IV heparin safety was of utmost concern.

To address this quality issue and improve clinical value, Allina Health created a systemwide interdisciplinary team to standardize IV heparin therapeutic guidelines and monitor the impact of the standard guideline on patient outcomes. Allina Health engaged multiple physician stakeholder groups to review proposed protocols and provide critical feedback to help ensure the best possible patient care and safety. To effectively monitor IV heparin outcomes, patient safety, and the impact of the new, standard guidelines and protocols, Allina Health developed an anticoagulation safety analytics application, using the Health Catalyst Analytics Platform, including the Late-Binding™ Data Warehouse and broad suite of analytics applications. These outcomes improvement efforts resulted in:

• A seven percent relative improvement in the percentage of patients therapeutic within 24 hours of protocol initiation.
• Paring 20+ site-based documents (e.g., policies, protocols, and order sets) to one systemwide guideline and four systemwide protocols.

MultiCare’s Transformational Journey Toward Sustained Outcomes Improvement

Mixed reviews of the effectiveness of pay-for-performance programs leave hospitals wondering how to affect meaningful change in patient care and outcomes. However, MultiCare’s experience with focused improvement efforts supported by analytics for pneumonia, sepsis, and women’s care showed that better data consistently leads to better patient outcomes.

Committed to improving population health, and informed by their experience as well as national trends and outcomes, MultiCare formed a new partnership with Health Catalyst, a next-generation data, analytics, and decision support company. The shared risk partnership generated an improvement framework and governance structure formed around a Shared Governance Committee which is responsible for prioritizing, resourcing, and aligning improvement initiatives across MultiCare. The committee and the projects it ultimately approves are informed by data-driven opportunity analysis and ongoing analytics support. This partnership and structure have achieved the following:

Results

• Strategic alignment of outcomes goals across the organization.
• Established an Analytics Center of Excellence.
• Integrated financial data into outcomes improvement initiatives.

Faster Data Acquisition Delivers Speedy Time to Value

Effective data integration enables high value through more strategic, data-driven decision-making, while faster data acquisition feeds and speeds up the process. Orlando Health, one of Florida’s most comprehensive private, not-for-profit healthcare networks, recognized the need for effective data integration to successfully manage to the organization’s changing business needs. The health system needed the ability to rapidly acquire and link disparate healthcare data sources in various ways in order to answer clinical and business questions.

Leaders at Orlando Health needed a data warehouse that better met their needs. They determined that switching from an early binding data process to a late-binding process would provide greater flexibility and expand their access to critical data, with shorter data acquisition times.

With the new EDW, Orlando Health achieved the following efficiencies:

• 245 fewer days and 1.0 less full time employee (FTE) needed to integrate encounter billing summary system data.
• 56 fewer days and 0.4 less FTE needed to integrate Infection control system data.
• 99 percent reduction (90 days saved) in the amount of time needed to implement system enhancements.
• 98 percent reduction in the work hours needed to incorporate system enhancements.

How Allina and Minnesota Perinatal Physicians Lowered Stress and Raised Satisfaction for High Risk Maternal Patients

Assuring patient satisfaction can be challenging, particularly when providing care to pregnant women with high-risk pregnancy conditions. As one of the foremost perinatal practices in the country, Minnesota Perinatal Physicians (MPP) acted swiftly to end a significant delay in scheduling ultrasound appointments, and reduced wait times for other visits.

With an aim to improve patient care and experience, the maternal fetal medicine (MFM) specialists at MPP, employees of Allina Health, leveraged Allina’s “Improving Clinical Value” Program—an initiative that has elevated the patient care experience for numerous other patient populations while simultaneously lowering the per capita cost of care for each one.

Results:

• $210,000 in increased revenue because of improved access, projected to be $280,000 within 12 months.
• 20.8 percent relative improvement in no-show rate.
• 20 percent increase in available ultrasound appointments and an 18.2 percent increase in utilization.