Value-based care has remade the healthcare landscape for small hospitals. Many are struggling to compete with the larger, better-funded medical centers in the communities they serve. Embracing data and analytics is no longer a luxury for these organizations if they are to succeed and remain competitive. Data analysis can assist senior leaders in identifying opportunities for improvement while balancing long-term goals with short-term pressures. Incorporating data in to the culture and making it a part of everyday decision making will enable smaller hospitals to not only survive, but thrive in the new era of value-based care.

1. Analytics and Small Hospitals:
Embracing Data to Thrive in the
New Era of Value-Based Care
– John Wadsworth

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Healthcare Analytics
The term community hospital
conjures up several images: a
hospital serving a given populous,
providing a significant community
service or a stand-alone facility
with ambulatory care clinics
working together.
Perhaps it’s even a government-
subsidized facility caring for the
poor and underserved.
However it’s defined, the majority of community hospitals
operate under extremely tight margins and data analytics
has been deemed “nice to have if we can afford it.”

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Healthcare Analytics
The transition to value-based
care has altered the healthcare
landscape, making it difficult for
some community hospitals to
compete.
Using data and analytics is no
longer a luxury.
Community hospitals are having
to embrace analytics, making it a
part of their culture and everyday
decision making.

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Analytics and Small Hospitals
As Health Catalyst continues
to partner with community
hospitals around the country,
common themes have
emerged from organizations
successfully implementing a
data and analytics strategy.

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New Roles and Responsibilities
To execute value-based care
transformation, healthcare
organizations are recognizing the
need for new roles and skill sets to
support the transition.
Senior leaders are coming to
realize their organization can drive
improvement with highly skilled
teams to bring together analytics,
best-practice clinical content, and
process improvement.

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New Roles and Responsibilities
A recent survey by AMN
Healthcare reports that 86 percent
of healthcare organizations are
keenly aware of the need for new
types of healthcare professionals.
However, it also revealed that a
much smaller percentage is
actively recruiting executive and
frontline employees with value-
based care experience.

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New Roles and Responsibilities
Successfully staffing an enterprise
data warehouse (EDW) initiative
is no small feat.
The technical prowess required to
build the EDW and derive
continued ROI from it, requires
highly specialized skill sets.
Translation?
These professionals are difficult to
recruit and expensive to hire.

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New Roles and Responsibilities
Thriving community hospitals
realize, however, they cannot
begin to identify areas for
improvement, let alone implement
a plan of action, without these
competencies being available.
In most instances, the technical
staff is made up of existing
resources, allowing healthcare
organizations to maintain a low-
cost entry point for the EDW’s ROI.

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New Roles and Responsibilities
Outsourcing some technical
capabilities, such as extracting,
transferring, and loading data,
frees up capacity for the team to
maximize skill sets needed for the
EDW implementation and adoption.
Professionals with skills such as
SQL development for data mining,
data modeling, data analysis and BI
development (visualization) are the
essential roles necessary to drive
outcome improvement.

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IT Efficiency
Community hospitals run under
very narrow margins so efficiency
is imperative.
Leadership partners with IT to
drive iterative value in short
cycles. Together, they frontload
exploration and planning,
identifying areas to reduce waste.
Data analysts quantify the waste
and assist the team in prioritizing
focus areas to eliminate it.

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IT Efficiency
IT’s contribution is to build the
measurement system that
accurately reflects the current
workflow and measures the
impact of any changes made to it.
Developed in partnership with
clinical and operational
leadership, the applications are
intuitive and enable physicians to
engage in a seamless, natural
manner.

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Physician Engagement
The idea of using data and
analytics as a means of providing
better patient care may be new for
some physicians; it can be
perceived as too impersonal.
Successful, innovative community
hospitals with high physician
engagement are developing
creative ways to reward
physicians who engage in
continuous quality improvement.

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Physician Engagement
Some hospitals opt for monetary
compensation, recognizing that
time away from the clinic means
lost revenue for the physician.
The value physicians bring to the
improvement process outweighs
the money spent to compensate
them for the time they could be
spending treating patients.

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Physician Engagement
Many physicians, passionate
about improving care delivery, are
rewarded by having the
opportunity to influence in
prioritizing and participating in
improvement initiatives.
Access to credible data that
provides visibility into their work is
often payment enough for
community physicians mindful of
hospital budget constraints.

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Analytics Make All the Difference
By and large the CEO’s of
community hospitals are not
physicians. They are business
men and women dealing with
the realities of local board,
budget, and political pressures.
The CEO must balance long-
term goals with short-term
pressures while continually
striving to deliver superior care
to the patients in the
communities they serve.

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Analytics Make All the Difference
Analytics play a critical role in
these organizations as they
strive to compete with the
medical centers and integrated
delivery networks.
Community hospitals tend to be
relatively flat organizations,
enabling the CEO to engage in
the details of the analytics,
identify opportunities for
improvement, and take action.

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Analytics Make All the Difference
Thibodaux Regional Medical
Center, with an IT staff of 18
and recently awarded the top
spot in this year’s Health IT
News, Best Hospital IT
Departments, is one example of
a successful, analytics driven
small hospital.

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Analytics Make All the Difference
Thibodaux Regional has used
lean principles to identify
opportunities for cost savings
and achieve improvement.
Over the last year, Thibodaux
Regional’s leadership has
focused on improving physician
engagement and strengthening
the organization’s culture of
continuous improvement.

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Analytics Make All the Difference
Using lean principles and KPAs,
the physician-led team identified
early recognition of sepsis
patients as an area for
improvement.
While the organization was
already outperforming the
national average, the team set
aggressive goals:
• Reduce mortality by 25%
• Lower costs by 20%
• Patient satisfaction rate of 99%

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Analytics Make All the Difference
A cross-functional team created
a triage protocol in the
Emergency Department and
built three and six hour sepsis
bundles.
To date, the team has reduced
sepsis mortality by 11% and is
poised to reduce the rate of
sepsis mortality by an
additional 25%.

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Conclusion
Community hospitals are
having to embrace analytics as
they contend with transitioning
to value-based care while
striving to stay competitive in
the communities they serve.
Incorporating data in to the
culture and ensuring it’s a part
of everyday decision making
will enable community to not
only survive, but thrive.

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More about this topic
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6 Proven Strategies for Engaging Physicians—and 4 Ways to Fail
Dr. Bryan Oshiro – Medical Director, Health Catalyst
Link to original article for a more in-depth discussion.
Analytics and Small Hospitals: Embracing Data to Thrive in the New Era of
Value-Based Care

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For more information:

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John Wadsworth joined Health Catalyst in September 2011 as a senior data
architect. Prior to Catalyst, he worked for Intermountain Healthcare and for ARUP
Laboratories as a data architect. John has a Master of Science degree in biomedical
informatics from the University of Utah, School of Medicine.
Other Clinical Quality Improvement Resources
Click to read additional information at www.healthcatalyst.com