With limited resources compared to large healthcare organizations and fewer personnel to shoulder burdens like COVID-19, medical practices must find ways to deliver better care with less. Delivering quality care, especially in a pandemic, is challenging, but analytics insight can guide effective care delivery methods, especially for smaller practices.
Comprehensive data combined with team members who can turn numbers into real-world information are essential for medical practices to ensure a strong financial, clinical, and operational future. Independent medical practices can rely on four analytics strategies to survive the uncertain healthcare market and plan for a sustainable future:
Prioritize access to up-to-date, comprehensive data sources.
Form a multidisciplinary approach to data governance.
Translate data into analytics insight.
Invest in analytics infrastructure to support rapid response.
The Top Seven Healthcare Outcome Measures and Three Measurement EssentialsHealth Catalyst
Healthcare outcomes improvement can’t happen without effective outcomes measurement. Given the healthcare industry’s administrative and regulatory complexities, and the fact that health systems measure and report on hundreds of outcomes annually, this article adds much-needed clarity by reviewing the top seven outcome measures, including definitions, important nuances, and real-life examples. The top seven categories of outcome measures are:
Mortality
Readmissions
Safety of care
Effectiveness of care
Patient experience
Timeliness of care
Efficient use of medical imaging
CMS used these seven outcome measures to calculate overall hospital quality and arrive at its 2018 hospital star ratings. This article also reiterates the importance of outcomes measurement, clarifies how outcome measures are defined and prioritized, and recommends three essentials for successful outcomes measurement.
Machine Learning in Healthcare: What C-Suite Executives Must Know to Use it E...Health Catalyst
Machine learning (ML) is gaining in popularity throughout healthcare. ML’s far-reaching benefits, from automating routine clinical tasks to providing visibility into which appointments are likely to no-show, make it a must-have in an industry that’s hyper focused on improving patient and operational outcomes.
This executive report—co-written by Microsoft Worldwide Health and Health Catalyst—is a basic guide to training machine learning algorithms and applying machine learning models to clinical and operational use case. This report shares practical, proven techniques healthcare organizations can use to improve their performance on a range of issues.
Is a Medical Writer the Missing Accelerant to Your Outcome Improvement Efforts?Health Catalyst
Quality improvement efforts are more important than ever. However, even improvement efforts that have the right people, processes, and technology can struggle to make progress. A medical writer with healthcare knowledge and strong information design skills may be the missing ingredient that can help speed time to adoption and value.
This article discusses the functions a medical writer can fulfill, and why they matter. You will also learn:
The four skills that a medical writer with strong information design skills brings to an improvement team.
Examples of output of medical writers in a healthcare setting.
The skills a medical writer needs.
Additionally, you will learn how to find this unique skill set and where you might find this key person.
Leveraging Technology to Increase Patient Satisfaction and Employee EngagementHealth Catalyst
Health systems are challenged by the need to keep patients and employees satisfied and engaged. This can be especially difficult for organizations in flux, growing, merging, and changing. And as leaders of these organizations know, poor patient satisfaction ratings lead to reduced reimbursements, which affect the bottom line.
To meet this challenge and improve patient satisfaction, health system leaders are taking advantage of technology, such as rounding software, that supports effective communication and drives the type of culture change that boosts both caregiver and patient satisfaction and encourages engagement. Embedding rounding technology into current processes makes rounding better and easier. The correlation between effective, efficient rounding and high patient satisfaction scores is clear. Rounding can and does increase engagement and satisfaction, which in turn leads to higher reimbursement potential. Learn how health system leaders can move from talking about rounding technology to incorporating it into daily workflow.
Improving Quality Measures Can Lead to Better OutcomesHealth Catalyst
Current quality measures are expensive and time consuming to report, and they don’t necessarily improve care. Many health systems are looking for better ways to measure the quality of their care, and they are using data analytics to achieve this goal. Data analytics can be helpful with quality improvement. There are four key considerations to evaluate quality measures:
Organizations must develop measures that are more clinically relevant and better represent the care provided.
Clinician buy-in is critical. Without it, quality improvement initiatives are less likely to succeed.
Investment in tools and effort surrounding improvement work must increase. Tools should include data analytics.
Measure improvement must translate to improvement in the care being measured.
When the right measures are in place to drive healthcare improvement, patient care and outcomes can and do improve.
Four Essential Ways Control Charts Guide Healthcare ImprovementHealth Catalyst
Control charts are a critical asset to any health system seeking effective, sustainable improvement. With a simple three-line format, control charts show process change over time, including the average of the data, upper control limit, and lower control limit. This insight helps improvement teams monitor projects, understand opportunities and the impact of initiatives, and sustain improved processes.
Also known as Shewhart charts or statistical process control charts, control charts drive effective improvement by addressing three fundamental questions:
1. What is the goal of the improvement project?
2. How will the organization know that a change is an improvement?
3. What change can the organization make that will result in improvement?
Effective Healthcare Decision Support for Executives: Three Problems that Lea...Health Catalyst
In the high-pressured world of value-based care, healthcare leadership is more important than ever. Leaders need to make data-driven decisions and respond to the increasing demands of patients while cutting costs.
The right tools–ones that support today’s outcome-focused healthcare environment–can help leaders break through the noise to make effective decisions. This article shares three common problems faced by healthcare leadership and how Leading Wisely, an executive decision support tool helps them make informed decisions and guide their organizations forward. Three effective strategies for healthcare leadership include:
How to prevent communication breakdown.
How to break through measure madness.
How to alleviate information overload and siloed reporting.
Three Must-Haves for a Successful Healthcare Data StrategyHealth Catalyst
Healthcare is confronting rising costs, aging and growing populations, an increasing focus on population health, alternative payment models, and other challenges as the industry shifts from volume to value. These obstacles drive a growing need for more digitization, accompanied by a data-centric improvement strategy.
To establish and maintain data as a primary strategy that guides clinical, financial, and operational transformation, organizations must have three systems in place:
Best practices to identify target behaviors and practices.
Analytics to accelerate improvement and identify gaps between best practices and analytic results.
Adoption processes to outline the path to transformation.
The Top Seven Healthcare Outcome Measures and Three Measurement EssentialsHealth Catalyst
Healthcare outcomes improvement can’t happen without effective outcomes measurement. Given the healthcare industry’s administrative and regulatory complexities, and the fact that health systems measure and report on hundreds of outcomes annually, this article adds much-needed clarity by reviewing the top seven outcome measures, including definitions, important nuances, and real-life examples. The top seven categories of outcome measures are:
Mortality
Readmissions
Safety of care
Effectiveness of care
Patient experience
Timeliness of care
Efficient use of medical imaging
CMS used these seven outcome measures to calculate overall hospital quality and arrive at its 2018 hospital star ratings. This article also reiterates the importance of outcomes measurement, clarifies how outcome measures are defined and prioritized, and recommends three essentials for successful outcomes measurement.
Machine Learning in Healthcare: What C-Suite Executives Must Know to Use it E...Health Catalyst
Machine learning (ML) is gaining in popularity throughout healthcare. ML’s far-reaching benefits, from automating routine clinical tasks to providing visibility into which appointments are likely to no-show, make it a must-have in an industry that’s hyper focused on improving patient and operational outcomes.
This executive report—co-written by Microsoft Worldwide Health and Health Catalyst—is a basic guide to training machine learning algorithms and applying machine learning models to clinical and operational use case. This report shares practical, proven techniques healthcare organizations can use to improve their performance on a range of issues.
Is a Medical Writer the Missing Accelerant to Your Outcome Improvement Efforts?Health Catalyst
Quality improvement efforts are more important than ever. However, even improvement efforts that have the right people, processes, and technology can struggle to make progress. A medical writer with healthcare knowledge and strong information design skills may be the missing ingredient that can help speed time to adoption and value.
This article discusses the functions a medical writer can fulfill, and why they matter. You will also learn:
The four skills that a medical writer with strong information design skills brings to an improvement team.
Examples of output of medical writers in a healthcare setting.
The skills a medical writer needs.
Additionally, you will learn how to find this unique skill set and where you might find this key person.
Leveraging Technology to Increase Patient Satisfaction and Employee EngagementHealth Catalyst
Health systems are challenged by the need to keep patients and employees satisfied and engaged. This can be especially difficult for organizations in flux, growing, merging, and changing. And as leaders of these organizations know, poor patient satisfaction ratings lead to reduced reimbursements, which affect the bottom line.
To meet this challenge and improve patient satisfaction, health system leaders are taking advantage of technology, such as rounding software, that supports effective communication and drives the type of culture change that boosts both caregiver and patient satisfaction and encourages engagement. Embedding rounding technology into current processes makes rounding better and easier. The correlation between effective, efficient rounding and high patient satisfaction scores is clear. Rounding can and does increase engagement and satisfaction, which in turn leads to higher reimbursement potential. Learn how health system leaders can move from talking about rounding technology to incorporating it into daily workflow.
Improving Quality Measures Can Lead to Better OutcomesHealth Catalyst
Current quality measures are expensive and time consuming to report, and they don’t necessarily improve care. Many health systems are looking for better ways to measure the quality of their care, and they are using data analytics to achieve this goal. Data analytics can be helpful with quality improvement. There are four key considerations to evaluate quality measures:
Organizations must develop measures that are more clinically relevant and better represent the care provided.
Clinician buy-in is critical. Without it, quality improvement initiatives are less likely to succeed.
Investment in tools and effort surrounding improvement work must increase. Tools should include data analytics.
Measure improvement must translate to improvement in the care being measured.
When the right measures are in place to drive healthcare improvement, patient care and outcomes can and do improve.
Four Essential Ways Control Charts Guide Healthcare ImprovementHealth Catalyst
Control charts are a critical asset to any health system seeking effective, sustainable improvement. With a simple three-line format, control charts show process change over time, including the average of the data, upper control limit, and lower control limit. This insight helps improvement teams monitor projects, understand opportunities and the impact of initiatives, and sustain improved processes.
Also known as Shewhart charts or statistical process control charts, control charts drive effective improvement by addressing three fundamental questions:
1. What is the goal of the improvement project?
2. How will the organization know that a change is an improvement?
3. What change can the organization make that will result in improvement?
Effective Healthcare Decision Support for Executives: Three Problems that Lea...Health Catalyst
In the high-pressured world of value-based care, healthcare leadership is more important than ever. Leaders need to make data-driven decisions and respond to the increasing demands of patients while cutting costs.
The right tools–ones that support today’s outcome-focused healthcare environment–can help leaders break through the noise to make effective decisions. This article shares three common problems faced by healthcare leadership and how Leading Wisely, an executive decision support tool helps them make informed decisions and guide their organizations forward. Three effective strategies for healthcare leadership include:
How to prevent communication breakdown.
How to break through measure madness.
How to alleviate information overload and siloed reporting.
Three Must-Haves for a Successful Healthcare Data StrategyHealth Catalyst
Healthcare is confronting rising costs, aging and growing populations, an increasing focus on population health, alternative payment models, and other challenges as the industry shifts from volume to value. These obstacles drive a growing need for more digitization, accompanied by a data-centric improvement strategy.
To establish and maintain data as a primary strategy that guides clinical, financial, and operational transformation, organizations must have three systems in place:
Best practices to identify target behaviors and practices.
Analytics to accelerate improvement and identify gaps between best practices and analytic results.
Adoption processes to outline the path to transformation.
Activity-Based Costing in Healthcare During COVID-19: Meeting Four Critical N...Health Catalyst
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:
Data management.
Scalability.
Ongoing maintenance.
Adoption.
Employer Health Plans: Keys to Lowering Cost, Boosting BenefitsHealth Catalyst
Employers that offer robust employee health plans at affordable costs are more likely to attract and retain a great workforce. Healthcare, however, is often a top expense for organizations, making balancing attractive benefits with attractive costs a complex undertaking. Employers need a deep understanding of employee populations and opportunities to manage health plan costs without sacrificing quality.
An analytics-driven approach to employee population health management gives employers insight into two key steps to lower healthcare costs and enhance benefits:
* Manage easily fixed cost issues.
* Use healthcare cost savings to fund expanded benefits.
Healthcare Relief Funding: Five Steps to Maximize COVID-19 DollarsHealth Catalyst
While federal COVID-19 relief funding for health systems sounds good in theory, many organizations have found accessing and using these monies overwhelming and frustrating. Federal guidance has been inconsistent or incomplete, and continued changes to relief packages and policies challenge organizations to develop pragmatic financial recovery strategies. Financial leaders who are confronting more questions than answers need a simple framework to move confidently into recovery.
The following five expert financial- and healthcare-based guidelines will help organizations navigate and optimize COVID-19 relief funding:
Regularly review legislative and regulatory updates and agency activity.
Make the most of what’s available.
Use required reporting as a decision-making tool.
Prepare now for the inevitable audit.
Test compliance now to eliminate headaches (or litigation) later.
How to Design an Effective Clinical Measurement System (And Avoid Common Pitf...Health Catalyst
As healthcare organizations strive to provide better care for patients, they must have an effective clinical measurement system to monitor their progress. First, there are only two potential aims when designing a clinical measurement system: measurement for selection or measurement for improvement. Understanding the difference between these two aims, as well as the connection between clinical measurement and improvement, is crucial to designing an effective system.
This article walks through the distinct difference between these two aims as well as how to avoid the common pitfalls that come with clinical measurement. It also discusses how to identify and track the right data elements using a seven-step process.
Reduce Bad Debt: Four Tactics to Limit Exposure During COVID-19Health Catalyst
Health systems have always faced bad debt—from charity care to insurance claim denials—and COVID-19 has exacerbated its impact on revenue. While hospitals and clinics are responsible for providing care to populations, they can still generate revenue from care delivery without compromising care accessibility or quality. An effective bad debt management approach provides the patient with every financial resource possible and allows the health systems to focus less on payment and more on delivering the best care.
With four tactics, health system leadership can identify bad debt and implement effective processes to minimize it without undue burden on patients:
Identify bad debt exposure early.
Educate patients about alternative payment options.
Leverage technology within the workflow.
Understand the true cost of care.
Bridging the Data and Trust Gaps: Why Health Catalyst Entered the Life Scienc...Health Catalyst
Why would a healthcare data warehousing and analytics company partner with the life sciences industry? Because trust and collaboration across the industry—between life sciences, healthcare delivery systems, and insurance—is the only path to real healthcare transformation.
Health Catalyst recognizes an industrywide improvement opportunity in collaborating with life sciences to build mutual trust, integrate data, and leverage analytics insights for a common interest (i.e., patient outcomes). By aligning themselves around human health fulfillment, Health Catalyst, their provider partners, and life sciences will advance important healthcare goals:
Improving clinical trial design and execution.
Stimulating clinical innovation.
Supporting population health.
Reducing pharmaceutical costs.
Improving drug safety and pharmacovigilance.
Putting Patients Back at the Center of Healthcare: How CMS Measures Prioritiz...Health Catalyst
Today’s healthcare encounters are too often marked by more clinician screen time than patient-clinician engagement. Increasing regulatory reporting burdens are diverting clinician attention from their true priority—the patient. To put patients back at the center of care, CMS introduced its Meaningful Measures framework in 2017. The initiative identifies the highest priorities for quality measurement and improvement, with the goal of aligning measures with CMS strategic goals, including the following:
Empowering patients and clinicians to make decisions about their healthcare.
Supporting innovative approaches to improve quality, safety, accessibility, and affordability.
Data Visualization Dashboards: Three Ways to Maximize DataHealth Catalyst
With an unpredictable future due to COVID-19, health systems must leverage data to drive decision making at every organizational level. Data visualization dashboards allow health systems to optimize their data and create a data-driven culture by displaying large, real-time data sets in an easy-to-understand dashboard.
Health systems that rely on dashboard reporting maximize their data in three important ways:
Time to value. Decision makers do not have time to wait for manually-created reports; dashboards quickly convey information so leaders can make swift decisions.
Data democratization. Leveraging a central source of truth, dashboards allow leaders at every level to access the most updated, accurate data.
Digestible data. Analysts can configure dashboards to highlight important figures and trends, so high-level leaders can understand complex data without diving into spreadsheets.
Population Health Success: Three Ways to Leverage DataHealth Catalyst
As the healthcare industry continues to focus on value, rather than volume, health systems are faced with delivering quality care to large populations with limited resources. To implement population health initiatives and deliver results, it is critical that care teams build population health strategies on actionable, up-to-date data. Health systems can better leverage data within population health and drive long-lasting change by implementing three small changes:
Increase team members’ access to data.
Support widespread data utilization.
Implement one source of data truth.
Access to accurate, reliable data boosts population health efforts while maintaining cost and improving outcomes. With actionable analytics providing insight and guiding decisions, population health teams can drive real change within their patient populations.
A Healthcare Mergers Framework: How to Accelerate the BenefitsHealth Catalyst
Health system mergers can promise significant savings for participating organizations. Research, however, indicates as much as a tenfold gap between expectation and reality, with systems looking for a savings of 15 percent but more likely to realize savings around 1.5 percent.
Driving the merger expectation-reality disparity is a complex process that, without diligent preparation and strategy, makes it difficult for organizations to fully leverage cost synergies. With the right framework, however, health systems can achieve the process management, data sharing, and governance structure to align leadership, clinicians, and all stakeholders around merger goals.
The Top Five Insights into Healthcare Operational Outcomes ImprovementHealth Catalyst
Effective, sustainable healthcare transformation rests in the organizational operations that power care delivery. Operations include the administrative, financial, legal, and clinical activities that keep health systems running and caring for patients. With operations so critical to care delivery, forward-thinking organizations continuously strive to improve their operational outcomes. Health systems can follow thought leadership that addresses common industry challenges—including waste reduction, obstacles in process change, limited hospital capacity, and complex project management—to inform their operational improvement strategies.
Five top insights address the following aspects of healthcare operational outcomes improvement:
Quality improvement as a foundational business strategy.
Using improvement science for true change.
Increasing hospital capacity without construction.
Leveraging project management techniques.
Features of highly effective improvement projects.
How to Run Your Healthcare Analytics Operation Like a BusinessHealth Catalyst
A robust data analytics operation is necessary for healthcare systems’ survival. Just like any business, the analytics enterprise needs to be well managed using the principles of successful business operations.
This article walks through how to run an analytics operation like a business using the following five-question framework:
Who does the analytics team serve and what are those customers trying to do?
What services does the analytics team provide to help customers accomplish their goals?
How does the analytics team know they’re doing a great job and how do they communicate that effectively to the leadership team?
What is the most efficient way to provide analytics services?
What is the most effective way to organize?
A Guide to Applying Quality improvement to Healthcare Five PrinciplesHealth Catalyst
Healthcare is an art and a science. What many in the industry don’t understand is that systems and processes can coexist with personalized care. Quality improvement methods can be as effective in healthcare as they have been in other industries (e.g., agriculture, manufacturing, etc.).
Quality improvement in healthcare is not just achievable, it’s an absolute necessity given the amount of wasteful spending in the U.S. on healthcare. Organizations can reduce this wasteful spending while improving their processes by applying these five guiding principles:
Facilitate adoption through hands-on improvement projects.
Define quality and get agreement.
Measure for improvement, not accountability.
Use a quality improvement framework and PDSA cycles.
Learn from variation in data.
By using these principles and starting small, organizations can quicken the pace of quality improvement in healthcare.
A Framework for High-Reliability Organizations in HealthcareHealth Catalyst
Drs. Allen Frankel and Michael Leonard have developed a framework for creating high-reliability organizations in healthcare. This report, based on their 2018 webinar, covers the components and factors of this frame work, including:
Leadership
Transparency
Reliability
Improvement and Measurement
Continuous Learning
Negotiation
Teamwork and Communication
Accountability
Psychological Safety
Using Improvement Science in Healthcare to Create True ChangeHealth Catalyst
With improvement science combined with analytics, health systems can better understand how, as they implement new process changes, to use theory to guide their practice, and which improvement strategy will help increase the likelihood of success.
The 8-Step Improvement Model is a framework that health systems can follow to effectively apply improvement science:
Analyze the opportunity for improvement and define the problem.
Scope the opportunity and set SMART goals.
Explore root causes and set SMART process aims.
Design interventions and plan initial implementation.
Implement interventions and measure results.
Monitor, adjust, and continually learn.
Diffuse and sustain.
Communicate Quantitative and Qualitative Results.
With the right approach, an improvement team can measure the results and know if the changes they made will actually lead to the desired impact.
Three Keys to Improving Hospital Patient Flow with Machine LearningHealth Catalyst
Health systems alike struggle to effectively manage hospital patient flow. With machine learning and predictive models, health systems can improve patient flow for different departments throughout the system like the emergency department. Health systems should focus on three key areas to foster successful data science that will lead to improved hospital patient flow:
Key 1. Build a data science team.
Key 2. Create a ML pipeline to aggregate all data sources.
Key 3. Form a comprehensive leadership team to govern data.
Improving hospital patient flow through predictive models results in reduced patient wait times, reduced staff overtime, improved patient outcomes, and improved patient and clinician satisfaction.
Harnessing the Power of Healthcare Data: Are We There YetHealth Catalyst
What can healthcare learn from Formula One racing? According to Dr. Sadiqa Mahmood, SVP of medical affairs and life sciences for Health Catalyst, race support teams leverage about 30TB of baseline data to create a digital twin of the car, track, and racer for simulation models that drive decisions at each race. Applied in the healthcare setting, a digital twin can help clinicians better understand each patient and their health conditions and circumstances in real time and make comprehensive, informed care decisions. But for the healthcare digital twin to happen, the industry must move away from data silos and towards a digital learning healthcare ecosystem.
Four Strategies Drive High-Value Healthcare Analytics for COVID-19 RecoveryHealth Catalyst
COVID-19 response and recovery is pushing healthcare to operate at an unprecedented level. To meet these demands and continue to improve outcomes and lower costs, healthcare analytics must perform more actionably and with broader organizational impact than ever. Health systems can follow four strategies to produce high-value analytics to withstand the pandemic and make healthcare better in the long term:
Minimize benchmarking.
Outsource regulatory reporting.
Grow risk-based stratification capabilities.
Run activity-based costing plus at-risk contracting.
To Safely Restart Elective Procedures, Look to the DataHealth Catalyst
Many health systems have realized they lack the data and analytics infrastructure to guide a sustainable reactivation plan and recover lost revenue from months of halted procedures due to COVID-19. However, with operational, clinical, and financial data, augmented by analytics tools, leaders have the visibility into hospital and resource capacity to guide a safe, sustainable elective surgery restart plan.
The first step on the road to recovery for health systems is access to robust analytics to understand the full impact of COVID-19 on clinical, financial, and operational outcomes. Second, organizations need data-sharing tools, like data displays and dashboards, allowing leaders to make decisions based on consistent data that support the organization’s reactivation goals. Leaders can even take the data one step further with predictive models and forecast procedure count, staff, and resources.
Hiring Top Healthcare Analytics Talent: Five Best PracticesHealth Catalyst
COVID-19 has escalated healthcare’s decision-making demands, reinforcing the industry’s need for highly skilled analytics team members. As a result, health systems face mounting pressure to hire the best-suited analytics talent in a timely manner and with minimal burden on existing team members.
Five proven inclusive strategies will help hiring managers efficiently build an analytics team that can adapt to healthcare’s shifting environment and also fit within an organization’s culture:
Open positions to remote employees and conduct interviews via video conferencing.
Insert “tollgates” into the hiring process.
Use scenario-based role play to assess many competencies concurrently.
Assess cultural fit.
Follow up with and provide feedback to all candidates.
Three Analytics Strategies to Drive Patient-Centered CareHealth Catalyst
The cost of uncoordinated care that fails to prioritize patient needs is estimated to be over $27.2 billion. One of the primary reasons behind these wasted healthcare dollars is a failure to effectively leverage data to understand patient needs—a must-have to deliver patient-centered, value-based care (VBC).
Three analytics strategies enable health systems to focus on patients while also meeting the financial standards for VBC delivery:
Prioritize patient outreach by risk level.
Deploy data tools to combat COVID-19.
Promote data literacy.
Detailed information from comprehensive data sets allows health systems to understand patient needs at a granular level and then use that insight to drive care decisions. More informed care ensures health systems are also meeting the core elements of VBC—managing costs, delivering quality, and ensuring an excellent patient experience.
Healthcare Financial Transformation: Five Leading StrategiesHealth Catalyst
Healthcare financial transformation—improving care delivery while lowering costs—has been an ongoing challenge for health systems in the era of value-based care and an even more prominent concern amid COVID-19. While better care and reduced expense to organizations and consumers might seem like opposing goals, by understanding the true cost of services and other drivers of expense, organizations can successfully manage costs while maintaining, and even improving, care delivery. To that end, health systems can use data- and analytics-driven tools and strategies to addresses financial challenges, including uncompensated care, prolonged accounts receivable days, discharged not final billed cases, inefficient resource use, and more.
Activity-Based Costing in Healthcare During COVID-19: Meeting Four Critical N...Health Catalyst
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:
Data management.
Scalability.
Ongoing maintenance.
Adoption.
Employer Health Plans: Keys to Lowering Cost, Boosting BenefitsHealth Catalyst
Employers that offer robust employee health plans at affordable costs are more likely to attract and retain a great workforce. Healthcare, however, is often a top expense for organizations, making balancing attractive benefits with attractive costs a complex undertaking. Employers need a deep understanding of employee populations and opportunities to manage health plan costs without sacrificing quality.
An analytics-driven approach to employee population health management gives employers insight into two key steps to lower healthcare costs and enhance benefits:
* Manage easily fixed cost issues.
* Use healthcare cost savings to fund expanded benefits.
Healthcare Relief Funding: Five Steps to Maximize COVID-19 DollarsHealth Catalyst
While federal COVID-19 relief funding for health systems sounds good in theory, many organizations have found accessing and using these monies overwhelming and frustrating. Federal guidance has been inconsistent or incomplete, and continued changes to relief packages and policies challenge organizations to develop pragmatic financial recovery strategies. Financial leaders who are confronting more questions than answers need a simple framework to move confidently into recovery.
The following five expert financial- and healthcare-based guidelines will help organizations navigate and optimize COVID-19 relief funding:
Regularly review legislative and regulatory updates and agency activity.
Make the most of what’s available.
Use required reporting as a decision-making tool.
Prepare now for the inevitable audit.
Test compliance now to eliminate headaches (or litigation) later.
How to Design an Effective Clinical Measurement System (And Avoid Common Pitf...Health Catalyst
As healthcare organizations strive to provide better care for patients, they must have an effective clinical measurement system to monitor their progress. First, there are only two potential aims when designing a clinical measurement system: measurement for selection or measurement for improvement. Understanding the difference between these two aims, as well as the connection between clinical measurement and improvement, is crucial to designing an effective system.
This article walks through the distinct difference between these two aims as well as how to avoid the common pitfalls that come with clinical measurement. It also discusses how to identify and track the right data elements using a seven-step process.
Reduce Bad Debt: Four Tactics to Limit Exposure During COVID-19Health Catalyst
Health systems have always faced bad debt—from charity care to insurance claim denials—and COVID-19 has exacerbated its impact on revenue. While hospitals and clinics are responsible for providing care to populations, they can still generate revenue from care delivery without compromising care accessibility or quality. An effective bad debt management approach provides the patient with every financial resource possible and allows the health systems to focus less on payment and more on delivering the best care.
With four tactics, health system leadership can identify bad debt and implement effective processes to minimize it without undue burden on patients:
Identify bad debt exposure early.
Educate patients about alternative payment options.
Leverage technology within the workflow.
Understand the true cost of care.
Bridging the Data and Trust Gaps: Why Health Catalyst Entered the Life Scienc...Health Catalyst
Why would a healthcare data warehousing and analytics company partner with the life sciences industry? Because trust and collaboration across the industry—between life sciences, healthcare delivery systems, and insurance—is the only path to real healthcare transformation.
Health Catalyst recognizes an industrywide improvement opportunity in collaborating with life sciences to build mutual trust, integrate data, and leverage analytics insights for a common interest (i.e., patient outcomes). By aligning themselves around human health fulfillment, Health Catalyst, their provider partners, and life sciences will advance important healthcare goals:
Improving clinical trial design and execution.
Stimulating clinical innovation.
Supporting population health.
Reducing pharmaceutical costs.
Improving drug safety and pharmacovigilance.
Putting Patients Back at the Center of Healthcare: How CMS Measures Prioritiz...Health Catalyst
Today’s healthcare encounters are too often marked by more clinician screen time than patient-clinician engagement. Increasing regulatory reporting burdens are diverting clinician attention from their true priority—the patient. To put patients back at the center of care, CMS introduced its Meaningful Measures framework in 2017. The initiative identifies the highest priorities for quality measurement and improvement, with the goal of aligning measures with CMS strategic goals, including the following:
Empowering patients and clinicians to make decisions about their healthcare.
Supporting innovative approaches to improve quality, safety, accessibility, and affordability.
Data Visualization Dashboards: Three Ways to Maximize DataHealth Catalyst
With an unpredictable future due to COVID-19, health systems must leverage data to drive decision making at every organizational level. Data visualization dashboards allow health systems to optimize their data and create a data-driven culture by displaying large, real-time data sets in an easy-to-understand dashboard.
Health systems that rely on dashboard reporting maximize their data in three important ways:
Time to value. Decision makers do not have time to wait for manually-created reports; dashboards quickly convey information so leaders can make swift decisions.
Data democratization. Leveraging a central source of truth, dashboards allow leaders at every level to access the most updated, accurate data.
Digestible data. Analysts can configure dashboards to highlight important figures and trends, so high-level leaders can understand complex data without diving into spreadsheets.
Population Health Success: Three Ways to Leverage DataHealth Catalyst
As the healthcare industry continues to focus on value, rather than volume, health systems are faced with delivering quality care to large populations with limited resources. To implement population health initiatives and deliver results, it is critical that care teams build population health strategies on actionable, up-to-date data. Health systems can better leverage data within population health and drive long-lasting change by implementing three small changes:
Increase team members’ access to data.
Support widespread data utilization.
Implement one source of data truth.
Access to accurate, reliable data boosts population health efforts while maintaining cost and improving outcomes. With actionable analytics providing insight and guiding decisions, population health teams can drive real change within their patient populations.
A Healthcare Mergers Framework: How to Accelerate the BenefitsHealth Catalyst
Health system mergers can promise significant savings for participating organizations. Research, however, indicates as much as a tenfold gap between expectation and reality, with systems looking for a savings of 15 percent but more likely to realize savings around 1.5 percent.
Driving the merger expectation-reality disparity is a complex process that, without diligent preparation and strategy, makes it difficult for organizations to fully leverage cost synergies. With the right framework, however, health systems can achieve the process management, data sharing, and governance structure to align leadership, clinicians, and all stakeholders around merger goals.
The Top Five Insights into Healthcare Operational Outcomes ImprovementHealth Catalyst
Effective, sustainable healthcare transformation rests in the organizational operations that power care delivery. Operations include the administrative, financial, legal, and clinical activities that keep health systems running and caring for patients. With operations so critical to care delivery, forward-thinking organizations continuously strive to improve their operational outcomes. Health systems can follow thought leadership that addresses common industry challenges—including waste reduction, obstacles in process change, limited hospital capacity, and complex project management—to inform their operational improvement strategies.
Five top insights address the following aspects of healthcare operational outcomes improvement:
Quality improvement as a foundational business strategy.
Using improvement science for true change.
Increasing hospital capacity without construction.
Leveraging project management techniques.
Features of highly effective improvement projects.
How to Run Your Healthcare Analytics Operation Like a BusinessHealth Catalyst
A robust data analytics operation is necessary for healthcare systems’ survival. Just like any business, the analytics enterprise needs to be well managed using the principles of successful business operations.
This article walks through how to run an analytics operation like a business using the following five-question framework:
Who does the analytics team serve and what are those customers trying to do?
What services does the analytics team provide to help customers accomplish their goals?
How does the analytics team know they’re doing a great job and how do they communicate that effectively to the leadership team?
What is the most efficient way to provide analytics services?
What is the most effective way to organize?
A Guide to Applying Quality improvement to Healthcare Five PrinciplesHealth Catalyst
Healthcare is an art and a science. What many in the industry don’t understand is that systems and processes can coexist with personalized care. Quality improvement methods can be as effective in healthcare as they have been in other industries (e.g., agriculture, manufacturing, etc.).
Quality improvement in healthcare is not just achievable, it’s an absolute necessity given the amount of wasteful spending in the U.S. on healthcare. Organizations can reduce this wasteful spending while improving their processes by applying these five guiding principles:
Facilitate adoption through hands-on improvement projects.
Define quality and get agreement.
Measure for improvement, not accountability.
Use a quality improvement framework and PDSA cycles.
Learn from variation in data.
By using these principles and starting small, organizations can quicken the pace of quality improvement in healthcare.
A Framework for High-Reliability Organizations in HealthcareHealth Catalyst
Drs. Allen Frankel and Michael Leonard have developed a framework for creating high-reliability organizations in healthcare. This report, based on their 2018 webinar, covers the components and factors of this frame work, including:
Leadership
Transparency
Reliability
Improvement and Measurement
Continuous Learning
Negotiation
Teamwork and Communication
Accountability
Psychological Safety
Using Improvement Science in Healthcare to Create True ChangeHealth Catalyst
With improvement science combined with analytics, health systems can better understand how, as they implement new process changes, to use theory to guide their practice, and which improvement strategy will help increase the likelihood of success.
The 8-Step Improvement Model is a framework that health systems can follow to effectively apply improvement science:
Analyze the opportunity for improvement and define the problem.
Scope the opportunity and set SMART goals.
Explore root causes and set SMART process aims.
Design interventions and plan initial implementation.
Implement interventions and measure results.
Monitor, adjust, and continually learn.
Diffuse and sustain.
Communicate Quantitative and Qualitative Results.
With the right approach, an improvement team can measure the results and know if the changes they made will actually lead to the desired impact.
Three Keys to Improving Hospital Patient Flow with Machine LearningHealth Catalyst
Health systems alike struggle to effectively manage hospital patient flow. With machine learning and predictive models, health systems can improve patient flow for different departments throughout the system like the emergency department. Health systems should focus on three key areas to foster successful data science that will lead to improved hospital patient flow:
Key 1. Build a data science team.
Key 2. Create a ML pipeline to aggregate all data sources.
Key 3. Form a comprehensive leadership team to govern data.
Improving hospital patient flow through predictive models results in reduced patient wait times, reduced staff overtime, improved patient outcomes, and improved patient and clinician satisfaction.
Harnessing the Power of Healthcare Data: Are We There YetHealth Catalyst
What can healthcare learn from Formula One racing? According to Dr. Sadiqa Mahmood, SVP of medical affairs and life sciences for Health Catalyst, race support teams leverage about 30TB of baseline data to create a digital twin of the car, track, and racer for simulation models that drive decisions at each race. Applied in the healthcare setting, a digital twin can help clinicians better understand each patient and their health conditions and circumstances in real time and make comprehensive, informed care decisions. But for the healthcare digital twin to happen, the industry must move away from data silos and towards a digital learning healthcare ecosystem.
Four Strategies Drive High-Value Healthcare Analytics for COVID-19 RecoveryHealth Catalyst
COVID-19 response and recovery is pushing healthcare to operate at an unprecedented level. To meet these demands and continue to improve outcomes and lower costs, healthcare analytics must perform more actionably and with broader organizational impact than ever. Health systems can follow four strategies to produce high-value analytics to withstand the pandemic and make healthcare better in the long term:
Minimize benchmarking.
Outsource regulatory reporting.
Grow risk-based stratification capabilities.
Run activity-based costing plus at-risk contracting.
To Safely Restart Elective Procedures, Look to the DataHealth Catalyst
Many health systems have realized they lack the data and analytics infrastructure to guide a sustainable reactivation plan and recover lost revenue from months of halted procedures due to COVID-19. However, with operational, clinical, and financial data, augmented by analytics tools, leaders have the visibility into hospital and resource capacity to guide a safe, sustainable elective surgery restart plan.
The first step on the road to recovery for health systems is access to robust analytics to understand the full impact of COVID-19 on clinical, financial, and operational outcomes. Second, organizations need data-sharing tools, like data displays and dashboards, allowing leaders to make decisions based on consistent data that support the organization’s reactivation goals. Leaders can even take the data one step further with predictive models and forecast procedure count, staff, and resources.
Hiring Top Healthcare Analytics Talent: Five Best PracticesHealth Catalyst
COVID-19 has escalated healthcare’s decision-making demands, reinforcing the industry’s need for highly skilled analytics team members. As a result, health systems face mounting pressure to hire the best-suited analytics talent in a timely manner and with minimal burden on existing team members.
Five proven inclusive strategies will help hiring managers efficiently build an analytics team that can adapt to healthcare’s shifting environment and also fit within an organization’s culture:
Open positions to remote employees and conduct interviews via video conferencing.
Insert “tollgates” into the hiring process.
Use scenario-based role play to assess many competencies concurrently.
Assess cultural fit.
Follow up with and provide feedback to all candidates.
Three Analytics Strategies to Drive Patient-Centered CareHealth Catalyst
The cost of uncoordinated care that fails to prioritize patient needs is estimated to be over $27.2 billion. One of the primary reasons behind these wasted healthcare dollars is a failure to effectively leverage data to understand patient needs—a must-have to deliver patient-centered, value-based care (VBC).
Three analytics strategies enable health systems to focus on patients while also meeting the financial standards for VBC delivery:
Prioritize patient outreach by risk level.
Deploy data tools to combat COVID-19.
Promote data literacy.
Detailed information from comprehensive data sets allows health systems to understand patient needs at a granular level and then use that insight to drive care decisions. More informed care ensures health systems are also meeting the core elements of VBC—managing costs, delivering quality, and ensuring an excellent patient experience.
Healthcare Financial Transformation: Five Leading StrategiesHealth Catalyst
Healthcare financial transformation—improving care delivery while lowering costs—has been an ongoing challenge for health systems in the era of value-based care and an even more prominent concern amid COVID-19. While better care and reduced expense to organizations and consumers might seem like opposing goals, by understanding the true cost of services and other drivers of expense, organizations can successfully manage costs while maintaining, and even improving, care delivery. To that end, health systems can use data- and analytics-driven tools and strategies to addresses financial challenges, including uncompensated care, prolonged accounts receivable days, discharged not final billed cases, inefficient resource use, and more.
The 100-Percent Solution to Improving Healthcare’s Operating MarginsHealth Catalyst
Healthcare organizations face unparalleled pressure to increase operating margins as they adapt to the revenue compression from COVID-19 and growing competition from insurers and digital disrupters. Yet, many health systems rely on outdated, revenue-centric cost accounting solutions that are ill equipped for strategic financial decision making. As a methodology for today’s complex healthcare environment, activity-based costing (ABC) can capture healthcare resource use at a granular level. With this service-level insight into clinical cost, ABC provides actionable intelligence to help organizations improve profitability and make strategic cost-reduction decisions. These comprehensive costing solutions give health systems a full understanding of cost across the care continuum—the only level of insight that will enable strategic cost transformation in the industry’s new normal.
Five Ways Activity-Based Costing Can Maximize EarningsHealth Catalyst
Surviving on thin operating margins means health systems must maximize every financial earning opportunity. To identify threats to the revenue stream, organizations need access to precise, accurate costing information. An activity-based costing (ABC) system leverages patient resource utilization data to reveal exactly how much it costs to deliver care. Unlike traditional costing systems that provide average cost estimates for services rendered, ABC includes five benefits that help systems understand the cost for every aspect of the care delivery process:
1. Comprehensive costing data.
2. Ease of use.
3. Precision and accuracy.
4. Near real-time analytics.
5. A proactive cost strategy.
How to Evaluate Emerging Healthcare Technology with Innovative AnalyticsHealth Catalyst
As healthcare systems are pressured to cut costs and still provide high-quality care, they will need to look across the care continuum for answers, reduce variation in care, and look to emerging technologies. This article walks through how to evaluate the safety and effectiveness and of emerging healthcare technology and prioritize high-impact improvement projects using a robust data analytics platform. Topics covered include:
The importance of identifying variation in innovation.
Ways to improve outcomes and decrease costs.
The value of an analytics platform.
The reliable information that produce sparks for innovation.
Identifying and evaluating emerging healthcare technology.
Knowing what data to use.
The difference between efficacy and effectiveness in evaluation of emerging healthcare technology.
Deliver Data to Decision Makers: Two Important Strategies for SuccessHealth Catalyst
Surviving on thin operating margins underscores the need for all end users at a health system to make decisions based on comprehensive data sets. This data-centered approach to decision making allows team members to take the right course of action the first time and avoid making decisions based on fragmented data that exclude key pieces of information.
To promote data-driven decision making and a data-centric culture, healthcare organizations should increase data access and availability across the institution. With easy access to complete data, end users rely on the same data to make decisions, no matter where they work within the health system.
Two strategies can help organizations integrate and deliver data to end users when they need it:
Select infrastructure that fits most people’s needs.
Ask the right questions.
Achieving Stakeholder Engagement: A Population Health Management ImperativeHealth Catalyst
To succeed in population health management (PHM), organizations must overcome barriers including information silos and limited resources. Due to the systemwide nature of these challenges, widespread stakeholder engagement is an imperative in population-based improvement.
An effective PHM stakeholder engagement strategy incorporates the following:
Includes as many stakeholders as possible at the beginning of the journey.
Meets the unique analytics and reporting needs of the organization.
Enables users to measure, and therefore manage, PHM outcomes.
Provides the real-time analytics value-based care requires.
Effective Patient Stratification: Four Solutions to Common HurdlesHealth Catalyst
Accurate patient stratification, the first step of any effective population health strategy, identifies patients who will benefit most from a population health intervention. Successful patient stratification is critical when laying the foundation for any population health initiative, yet many health systems struggle with this step.
Care teams can apply four solutions to overcome common patient stratification hurdles, target the most impactable patients, and carry out population health initiatives:
Consider both the physical and the mental.
Prove and measure return on investment.
Complete data sets.
Transparent, customizable technology.
Healthcare Process Improvement: Six Strategies for Organizationwide Transform...Health Catalyst
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.
Four Keys to Increase Healthcare Market ShareHealth Catalyst
With leadership alignment, easy access to data, and a roadmap to reach their objectives, health systems can drastically increase revenue and grow market share by applying four principles:
Key 1. Alignment.
Key 2. Vehicles.
Key 3: Five tools: access to data, data acumen; finance, vision to execution, and prioritizing outcomes.
Key 4: Education.
Access to the right data can drive changes that generate $48M in revenue, surpassing the year three market share goals in year two.
The Foundations of Success in Population Health ManagementHealth Catalyst
From hospital systems to large employers, organizations are increasingly taking on financial risk for the health of populations. Drivers of this trend include the update to the MSSP model, the recent CMS Primary Cares Initiative announcement, the increasing prevalence of the Medicare Advantage model, innovative partnerships in the self-insured employer space, and the proliferation of Medicaid ACOs. Yet while market pressures push organizations toward population risk, they don't necessarily help them succeed: most organizations are struggling to attain or sustain the dual imperatives of high-quality care and cost containment. A primary reason? Short-sighted and tactical approaches that don't provide the flexible data infrastructure and tools to adapt to emerging trends in population health—or to support short-term contractual requirements while building toward long-term success.
View this launch webinar to learn about Health Catalyst’s Population Health Foundations solution, a data and analytics-first starter set aimed at optimizing performance in value-based risk arrangements and providing the data ecosystem that will flex and adapt to complex needs of risk-bearing organizations. Solution services ensure that the strategic value of data is maximized to improve performance in risk contracts—and provide side-by-side subject matter expert partnership for establishing short- and long-term goals for population health management (PHM).
Built on Health Catalyst’s foundational technology and supported by the nationwide experience and perspective of its experts, the Population Health Foundations solution helps organizations leverage multiple data sources to understand their patient populations and create meaningful views of financial and clinical quality performance. As a starter set that organizations can build on based on their needs, the solution is designed to compensate for the known limitations of “black box” population health applications that fail to reveal the “why” of analytic insights and exacerbate the challenges of transforming quality, cost, and care. The Population Health Foundations solution delivers the essential analytic tools needed for success under value-based risk arrangements.
In these slides you can expect to:
- Review recent changes to the field of value-based care, and reactions and insights from the market
- Discover how the Population Health Foundations solution can act as a comprehensive, data-first analytics solution to support your population stratification and monitoring needs
- Understand how this solution functions as a foundational starter set for value-based care success, enabling clients to leverage all their data and other relevant population health tools
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Healthcare: Four Real-World I...Health Catalyst
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.
ACOs: Four Ways Technology Contributes to SuccessHealth Catalyst
With an increasing emphasis on value-based care, Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are here to stay. In an ACO, healthcare providers and hospitals come together with the shared goals of reducing costs and increasing patient satisfaction by providing high-quality coordinated healthcare to Medicare patients. However, many ACOs lack direction and experience difficulty understanding how to use data to improve care. Implementing a robust data analytics system to automate the process of data gathering and analysis as well as aligning data with ACO quality reporting measures. The article walks through four keys to effectively implementing technology for ACO success:
Build a data repository with an analytics platform.
Bring data to the point of care.
Analyze claims data, identify outliers, including successes and failures.
Combine clinical claims, and quality data to identify opportunities for improvement.
Three Analytics Strategies to Drive Patient-Centered CareHealth Catalyst
Three analytics strategies enable health systems to focus on patients while also meeting the financial standards for VBC delivery:
1. Prioritize patient outreach by risk level.
2. Deploy data tools to combat COVID-19.
3. Promote data literacy.
Health Systems Share COVID-19 Financial Recovery Strategies in First Client H...Health Catalyst
More than 100 attendees joined the first of a series of Health Catalyst virtual client huddles designed to support client partners and aid collaboration and direct client connections in this time of unprecedented change. According to an April 2020 survey of Health Catalyst clients, 72.6 percent said they had a strong interest in examples, guidance, and tools from other health systems. In the client-only session, insights shared included the most common COVID-19 analytic projects and one health system’s elective surgery plan.
The health system shared the challenges they faced in understanding the financial impact of halting elective surgeries as well as creating a plan for working through their backlog. They also shared the tools and strategies they are using to aid their financial recovery.
Six Proven Methods to Combat COVID-19 with Real-World AnalyticsHealth Catalyst
As data in healthcare becomes more available than ever before, so does the need to apply that data to the unique challenges facing health systems, especially in a pandemic. Even with massive amounts of data, health systems still struggle to move data from spreadsheets to drive change in a clinical setting.
These six methods allow health systems to transform data into real-world analytics, going beyond basic data usage and maximizing actionable insight:
1. Create effective information displays.
2. Add context to data.
3. Ensure data processes are sustainable.
4. Certify data quality.
5. Provide systemwide access to data.
6. Refine the approach to knowledge management.
Advancing data use in healthcare with real-world analytics arms health systems with effective tools to combat COVID-19 and continue delivering quality care driven by comprehensive, actionable insight.
The Doctor’s Orders for Engaging Physicians to Drive ImprovementsHealth Catalyst
Physicians drive the majority of all quality and cost decisions, yet reimbursement pressures, competing time pressures, misaligned incentives, and a lack of credible data often make engaging clinicians in improvement work one of the biggest challenges in healthcare.
David Wild, MD, MBA, and Jack Beal, JD, explore how to spread data to the edges of the organization and engage physicians in leading a continuum of improvement across an entire organization.
During this webinar, our presenters:
• Identify the levels of physician leadership in your organization you can engage to drive improvement.
• Pinpoint the types of data and information of most interest to physician leaders.
• Propose several ways data to use data to engage physicians in leading improvement work.
• Help you develop at least one mechanism you can use to better engage physicians in improvement work at your organization.
Similar to Medical Practices’ Survival Depends on Four Analytics Strategies (20)
Empowering ACOs: Leveraging Quality Management Tools for MIPS and BeyondHealth Catalyst
Join us as we delve into the crucial realm of quality reporting for MSSP (Medicare Shared Savings Program) Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs).
In this session, we will explore how a robust quality management solution can empower your organization to meet regulatory requirements and improve processes for MIPS reporting and internal quality programs. Learn how our MeasureAble application enables compliance and fosters continuous improvement.
Unlock the Secrets to Optimizing Ambulatory Operations Efficiency and Change ...Health Catalyst
Today’s healthcare leaders are seeking technology solutions to optimize efficiencies and improve patient care. However, without effective change management and strategies in place, healthcare leaders struggle to strategically improve patient flow, space, to strategically improve patient flow, space, and schedule management, and implement daily huddles. The role of technology in supporting operational efficiency and change management initiatives is inevitable.
During this webinar, attendees will learn how to optimize Ambulatory Operational Efficiencies and Change Management. Attendees will also learn about the importance of visual management boards in enhancing clinic performance and insights into effective change management approaches.
Patient expectations are rising, and organizations are continuously being asked to do more with less.
Additionally, the convergence of several significant emerging market and policy trends, economic uncertainty, labor force shortages, and the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency has created a unique set of challenges for healthcare organizations.
Attend this timely webinar to learn about new trends and their impact on key healthcare issues, such as patient engagement, migration to value-based care, analytics adoption, the use of alternative care sites, and data governance and management challenges.
During this webinar, we will discuss the complexities of AI, trends, and platforms in the industry. Dive deep into understanding the true essence of AI, exploring its potential, real-world use cases, and common misconceptions. Gain valuable insights into the latest technology trends impacting healthcare and discover strategies for maximizing ROI in your technology investments.
Explore the profound impact of data literacy on healthcare organizations and how it shapes the utilization of data and technology for transformative outcomes. Understand the top technology priorities for healthcare organizations and learn how to navigate the digital landscape effectively. Furthermore, simplify industry jargon by defining common data elements, fostering clearer communication and collaboration across stakeholders.
Finally, uncover the transformative potentials of platforms in healthcare and how they can revolutionize scalability, interoperability, and innovation within your organization. Don't miss this opportunity to gain invaluable insights from industry experts and stay ahead in the ever-evolving healthcare landscape. Reserve your spot now for an enlightening journey into the future of healthcare technology!
Three Keys to a Successful Margin: Charges, Costs, and LaborHealth Catalyst
How can cost management and complete charge capture protect and enhance the margin?
In this webinar, we will look at 2024 margin pressures likely to impact your organization’s financial resiliency. This presentation will also share how organizations can move from Fee-for-Service to Value; bringing Cost to the forefront.
2024 CPT® Updates (Professional Services Focused) - Part 3Health Catalyst
Each year the CPT code set undergoes significant changes. Physicians and their office staff need to be aware of the changes in order to ensure a smooth transition into 2024. Join us for a discussion of the new, deleted and revised CPT codes and associated guidelines for 2024. This presentation will focus on the changes to the CPT dataset and the associated work RVU value changes that impact professional service reporting.
During this complimentary webinar, we will empower you to correctly apply the new and revised codes and discuss the rationale behind this year’s changes. You will leave with an understanding of the financial implications of the changes on your practice.
2024 CPT® Code Updates (HIM Focused) - Part 2Health Catalyst
Each year the CPT code set and the HCPCS code set undergo significant changes, and your coding staff needs to be aware of the changes in order to ensure a smooth transition into 2024. Join us for a discussion of the new, deleted and revised CPT codes and associated guidelines for 2024. This is part two in a three-part series.
During these complimentary webinars, we will empower you to correctly apply the new and revised codes and discuss the rationale behind this year’s changes. This presentation will be geared towards hospital staff with a focus on the surgical section of the CPT book in addition to surgical Category III codes.
2024 CPT® Code Updates (CDM Focused) - Part 1Health Catalyst
Each year the CPT and the HCPCS code sets undergo significant changes, and your staff needs to be aware of the changes in order to ensure a smooth transition into 2024. Join us for a discussion of the new, deleted, and revised CPT codes and associated guidelines for 2024. This is part one in a three-part series, with a CDM focus.
During these complimentary webinars, we will empower you to correctly apply the new and revised codes and discuss the rationale behind this year’s changes. This presentation will be geared towards hospital staff with a focus on the non-surgical sections of the CPT book.
What’s Next for Hospital Price Transparency in 2024 and BeyondHealth Catalyst
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published updates to the hospital price transparency requirements in the CY 2024 Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) Final Rule. The updates will be phased in over the next 14 months and include several significant changes including the use of a CMS-mandated template, a requirement for an affirmation statement from the hospital, and several new data elements. Join us to discover what changes are scheduled for implementation in 2024 and 2025 and how they’ll impact your facility.
During this complimentary 60-minute webinar, we’ll analyze the key provisions of the Price Transparency regulations and provide insights to help you prepare for the upcoming changes.
Automated Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs) for Hip & Knee ReplacementHealth Catalyst
What was once voluntary reporting will soon be made mandatory with penalties.
On July 1, 2024, all health systems will be required to collect Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROM) as part of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) regulation for the following measures:
Hospital-Level, Risk Standardized Patient-Reported Outcomes Performance Measure (PRO-PM) Following Elective Primary Total Hip Arthroplasty (THA) and/or Total Knee Arthroplasty (TKA)
Hospital-Level Risk-Standardized Complication Rate (RSCR) Following Elective Primary THA/TKA
Are you equipped to handle these new requirements?
Mandatory data collection begins April 1, 2024, and failure to submit timely data can result in a 25 percent reduction in payments by Medicare.
Attend this webinar to learn how mobile engagement can empower your organization to meet this requirement.
2024 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) Final Rule UpdatesHealth Catalyst
According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the calendar year (CY) 2024 MPFS final rule was created to advance health equity and improve access to affordable healthcare. This webinar will cover the major policy updates of the MPFS final rule including updates to the telehealth services policy and remote monitoring services and enrollment of MFTs and MHCs as Medicare providers. The conversation will also cover policy changes on split (or shared) evaluation and management (E/M) visits, and the Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) for Advanced Diagnostic Imaging.
What's Next for OPPS: A Look at the 2024 Final RuleHealth Catalyst
During this webinar, we’ll analyze the key provisions of the OPPS final rule and identify the significant changes for the coming year to help prepare your staff for compliance with the 2024 Medicare outpatient billing guidelines.
Insight into the 2024 ICD-10 PCS Updates - Part 2Health Catalyst
Prepare for mandatory ICD-10 PCS diagnosis code updates, which take effect on October 1, 2023. By attending this 60-minute educational session, medical coders and healthcare professionals will gain a comprehensive understanding of the changes to the 2024 ICD-10 procedure codes and their guidelines, enabling accurate and compliant coding for optimal billing and reimbursement.
Vitalware Insight Into the 2024 ICD10 CM Updates.pdfHealth Catalyst
Prepare for mandatory ICD-10 CM diagnosis code updates, which take effect on October 1, 2023. By attending this 60-minute educational session, medical coders and healthcare professionals will gain a comprehensive understanding of the changes to the 2024 ICD-10 diagnosis codes and their guidelines, along with major complication or comorbidity (MCC), complication or comorbidity (CC), and Medicare Severity Diagnosis Related Groups (MS-DRGs) classification changes. With this information, professionals can ensure accurate and compliant diagnosis coding for optimal billing and reimbursement.
Driving Value: Boosting Clinical Registry Value Using ARMUS SolutionsHealth Catalyst
Many hospitals today face a perfect storm of operational and financial challenges. With increasing competition from outpatient facilities and rising care costs negatively impacting budgets, now is the time to boost your clinical registry’s value. However, collecting and analyzing data can be time-consuming and costly without the right tools. During this webinar, we will share insights and best practices for increasing the value of registry participation and how it’s possible to reduce costs while improving outcomes using the ARMUS Product Suite.
Tech-Enabled Managed Services: Not Your Average OutsourcingHealth Catalyst
During this webinar you'll learn the following:
The importance of optimizing performance, reducing labor costs and sourcing talent given current market challenges.
Highlighting the need for a balanced approach to cost reduction.
How to reap the benefits of outsourcing (cost cutting, expertise, etc) while protecting yourself from the collateral damage that often comes with them.
This webinar will provide an in-depth review of the CPT/HCPCS code set changes that will be effective on July 1, 2023. The review will include additions and deletions to the CPT/HCPCS code set, revisions of code descriptors, payment changes, and rationale behind the changes.
How Managing Chronic Conditions Is Streamlined with Digital TechnologyHealth Catalyst
Chronic conditions across the United States are prevalent and continue to rise. Managing one or more chronic diseases can be very challenging for patients who may be overwhelmed or confused about their care plan and may not have access to the resources they need. At the same time, care teams are overburdened, making it difficult to provide the support these patients require to stay as healthy as possible. A new approach to chronic condition management leverages technology to enable organizations to scale high-quality care, identify gaps in care, provide personalized support, and monitor patients on an ongoing basis. Such streamlined management will result in better outcomes, reduced costs, and more satisfied patients.
COVID-19: After the Public Health Emergency EndsHealth Catalyst
In this fast-paced webinar, we will discuss the impact of the end of the public health emergency (PHE), including upcoming changes to the different flexibilities allowed during the PHE and the timeline for when these flexibilities will end. We’ll also cover coding changes and reimbursement updates.
Automated Medication Compliance Tools for the Provider and PatientHealth Catalyst
When it comes to sustaining patient health outcomes, compliance and adherence to medication regimens are critically important, especially as providers manage patients with complex care needs and multiple medications. But, with provider burnout and staffing shortages at an all-time high, an efficient solution is critical. The use of automated medication management workflows to decrease provider burnout, while improving both medication compliance and patient engagement, is the way forward.
One of the most developed cities of India, the city of Chennai is the capital of Tamilnadu and many people from different parts of India come here to earn their bread and butter. Being a metropolitan, the city is filled with towering building and beaches but the sad part as with almost every Indian city
Medical Technology Tackles New Health Care Demand - Research Report - March 2...pchutichetpong
M Capital Group (“MCG”) predicts that with, against, despite, and even without the global pandemic, the medical technology (MedTech) industry shows signs of continuous healthy growth, driven by smaller, faster, and cheaper devices, growing demand for home-based applications, technological innovation, strategic acquisitions, investments, and SPAC listings. MCG predicts that this should reflects itself in annual growth of over 6%, well beyond 2028.
According to Chris Mouchabhani, Managing Partner at M Capital Group, “Despite all economic scenarios that one may consider, beyond overall economic shocks, medical technology should remain one of the most promising and robust sectors over the short to medium term and well beyond 2028.”
There is a movement towards home-based care for the elderly, next generation scanning and MRI devices, wearable technology, artificial intelligence incorporation, and online connectivity. Experts also see a focus on predictive, preventive, personalized, participatory, and precision medicine, with rising levels of integration of home care and technological innovation.
The average cost of treatment has been rising across the board, creating additional financial burdens to governments, healthcare providers and insurance companies. According to MCG, cost-per-inpatient-stay in the United States alone rose on average annually by over 13% between 2014 to 2021, leading MedTech to focus research efforts on optimized medical equipment at lower price points, whilst emphasizing portability and ease of use. Namely, 46% of the 1,008 medical technology companies in the 2021 MedTech Innovator (“MTI”) database are focusing on prevention, wellness, detection, or diagnosis, signaling a clear push for preventive care to also tackle costs.
In addition, there has also been a lasting impact on consumer and medical demand for home care, supported by the pandemic. Lockdowns, closure of care facilities, and healthcare systems subjected to capacity pressure, accelerated demand away from traditional inpatient care. Now, outpatient care solutions are driving industry production, with nearly 70% of recent diagnostics start-up companies producing products in areas such as ambulatory clinics, at-home care, and self-administered diagnostics.
Antibiotic Stewardship by Anushri Srivastava.pptxAnushriSrivastav
Stewardship is the act of taking good care of something.
Antimicrobial stewardship is a coordinated program that promotes the appropriate use of antimicrobials (including antibiotics), improves patient outcomes, reduces microbial resistance, and decreases the spread of infections caused by multidrug-resistant organisms.
WHO launched the Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (GLASS) in 2015 to fill knowledge gaps and inform strategies at all levels.
ACCORDING TO apic.org,
Antimicrobial stewardship is a coordinated program that promotes the appropriate use of antimicrobials (including antibiotics), improves patient outcomes, reduces microbial resistance, and decreases the spread of infections caused by multidrug-resistant organisms.
ACCORDING TO pewtrusts.org,
Antibiotic stewardship refers to efforts in doctors’ offices, hospitals, long term care facilities, and other health care settings to ensure that antibiotics are used only when necessary and appropriate
According to WHO,
Antimicrobial stewardship is a systematic approach to educate and support health care professionals to follow evidence-based guidelines for prescribing and administering antimicrobials
In 1996, John McGowan and Dale Gerding first applied the term antimicrobial stewardship, where they suggested a causal association between antimicrobial agent use and resistance. They also focused on the urgency of large-scale controlled trials of antimicrobial-use regulation employing sophisticated epidemiologic methods, molecular typing, and precise resistance mechanism analysis.
Antimicrobial Stewardship(AMS) refers to the optimal selection, dosing, and duration of antimicrobial treatment resulting in the best clinical outcome with minimal side effects to the patients and minimal impact on subsequent resistance.
According to the 2019 report, in the US, more than 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections occur each year, and more than 35000 people die. In addition to this, it also mentioned that 223,900 cases of Clostridoides difficile occurred in 2017, of which 12800 people died. The report did not include viruses or parasites
VISION
Being proactive
Supporting optimal animal and human health
Exploring ways to reduce overall use of antimicrobials
Using the drugs that prevent and treat disease by killing microscopic organisms in a responsible way
GOAL
to prevent the generation and spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Doing so will preserve the effectiveness of these drugs in animals and humans for years to come.
being to preserve human and animal health and the effectiveness of antimicrobial medications.
to implement a multidisciplinary approach in assembling a stewardship team to include an infectious disease physician, a clinical pharmacist with infectious diseases training, infection preventionist, and a close collaboration with the staff in the clinical microbiology laboratory
to prevent antimicrobial overuse, misuse and abuse.
to minimize the developme
India Clinical Trials Market: Industry Size and Growth Trends [2030] Analyzed...Kumar Satyam
According to TechSci Research report, "India Clinical Trials Market- By Region, Competition, Forecast & Opportunities, 2030F," the India Clinical Trials Market was valued at USD 2.05 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.64% through 2030. The market is driven by a variety of factors, making India an attractive destination for pharmaceutical companies and researchers. India's vast and diverse patient population, cost-effective operational environment, and a large pool of skilled medical professionals contribute significantly to the market's growth. Additionally, increasing government support in streamlining regulations and the growing prevalence of lifestyle diseases further propel the clinical trials market.
Growing Prevalence of Lifestyle Diseases
The rising incidence of lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer is a major trend driving the clinical trials market in India. These conditions necessitate the development and testing of new treatment methods, creating a robust demand for clinical trials. The increasing burden of these diseases highlights the need for innovative therapies and underscores the importance of India as a key player in global clinical research.
Health Education on prevention of hypertensionRadhika kulvi
Hypertension is a chronic condition of concern due to its role in the causation of coronary heart diseases. Hypertension is a worldwide epidemic and important risk factor for coronary artery disease, stroke and renal diseases. Blood pressure is the force exerted by the blood against the walls of the blood vessels and is sufficient to maintain tissue perfusion during activity and rest. Hypertension is sustained elevation of BP. In adults, HTN exists when systolic blood pressure is equal to or greater than 140mmHg or diastolic BP is equal to or greater than 90mmHg. The
CHAPTER 1 SEMESTER V - ROLE OF PEADIATRIC NURSE.pdfSachin Sharma
Pediatric nurses play a vital role in the health and well-being of children. Their responsibilities are wide-ranging, and their objectives can be categorized into several key areas:
1. Direct Patient Care:
Objective: Provide comprehensive and compassionate care to infants, children, and adolescents in various healthcare settings (hospitals, clinics, etc.).
This includes tasks like:
Monitoring vital signs and physical condition.
Administering medications and treatments.
Performing procedures as directed by doctors.
Assisting with daily living activities (bathing, feeding).
Providing emotional support and pain management.
2. Health Promotion and Education:
Objective: Promote healthy behaviors and educate children, families, and communities about preventive healthcare.
This includes tasks like:
Administering vaccinations.
Providing education on nutrition, hygiene, and development.
Offering breastfeeding and childbirth support.
Counseling families on safety and injury prevention.
3. Collaboration and Advocacy:
Objective: Collaborate effectively with doctors, social workers, therapists, and other healthcare professionals to ensure coordinated care for children.
Objective: Advocate for the rights and best interests of their patients, especially when children cannot speak for themselves.
This includes tasks like:
Communicating effectively with healthcare teams.
Identifying and addressing potential risks to child welfare.
Educating families about their child's condition and treatment options.
4. Professional Development and Research:
Objective: Stay up-to-date on the latest advancements in pediatric healthcare through continuing education and research.
Objective: Contribute to improving the quality of care for children by participating in research initiatives.
This includes tasks like:
Attending workshops and conferences on pediatric nursing.
Participating in clinical trials related to child health.
Implementing evidence-based practices into their daily routines.
By fulfilling these objectives, pediatric nurses play a crucial role in ensuring the optimal health and well-being of children throughout all stages of their development.
R3 Stem Cells and Kidney Repair A New Horizon in Nephrology.pptxR3 Stem Cell
R3 Stem Cells and Kidney Repair: A New Horizon in Nephrology" explores groundbreaking advancements in the use of R3 stem cells for kidney disease treatment. This insightful piece delves into the potential of these cells to regenerate damaged kidney tissue, offering new hope for patients and reshaping the future of nephrology.
Defecation
Normal defecation begins with movement in the left colon, moving stool toward the anus. When stool reaches the rectum, the distention causes relaxation of the internal sphincter and an awareness of the need to defecate. At the time of defecation, the external sphincter relaxes, and abdominal muscles contract, increasing intrarectal pressure and forcing the stool out
The Valsalva maneuver exerts pressure to expel faeces through a voluntary contraction of the abdominal muscles while maintaining forced expiration against a closed airway. Patients with cardiovascular disease, glaucoma, increased intracranial pressure, or a new surgical wound are at greater risk for cardiac dysrhythmias and elevated blood pressure with the Valsalva maneuver and need to avoid straining to pass the stool.
Normal defecation is painless, resulting in passage of soft, formed stool
CONSTIPATION
Constipation is a symptom, not a disease. Improper diet, reduced fluid intake, lack of exercise, and certain medications can cause constipation. For example, patients receiving opiates for pain after surgery often require a stool softener or laxative to prevent constipation. The signs of constipation include infrequent bowel movements (less than every 3 days), difficulty passing stools, excessive straining, inability to defecate at will, and hard feaces
IMPACTION
Fecal impaction results from unrelieved constipation. It is a collection of hardened feces wedged in the rectum that a person cannot expel. In cases of severe impaction the mass extends up into the sigmoid colon.
DIARRHEA
Diarrhea is an increase in the number of stools and the passage of liquid, unformed feces. It is associated with disorders affecting digestion, absorption, and secretion in the GI tract. Intestinal contents pass through the small and large intestine too quickly to allow for the usual absorption of fluid and nutrients. Irritation within the colon results in increased mucus secretion. As a result, feces become watery, and the patient is unable to control the urge to defecate. Normally an anal bag is safe and effective in long-term treatment of patients with fecal incontinence at home, in hospice, or in the hospital. Fecal incontinence is expensive and a potentially dangerous condition in terms of contamination and risk of skin ulceration
HEMORRHOIDS
Hemorrhoids are dilated, engorged veins in the lining of the rectum. They are either external or internal.
FLATULENCE
As gas accumulates in the lumen of the intestines, the bowel wall stretches and distends (flatulence). It is a common cause of abdominal fullness, pain, and cramping. Normally intestinal gas escapes through the mouth (belching) or the anus (passing of flatus)
FECAL INCONTINENCE
Fecal incontinence is the inability to control passage of feces and gas from the anus. Incontinence harms a patient’s body image
PREPARATION AND GIVING OF LAXATIVESACCORDING TO POTTER AND PERRY,
An enema is the instillation of a solution into the rectum and sig
Explore our infographic on 'Essential Metrics for Palliative Care Management' which highlights key performance indicators crucial for enhancing the quality and efficiency of palliative care services.
This visual guide breaks down important metrics across four categories: Patient-Centered Metrics, Care Efficiency Metrics, Quality of Life Metrics, and Staff Metrics. Each section is designed to help healthcare professionals monitor and improve care delivery for patients facing serious illnesses. Understand how to implement these metrics in your palliative care practices for better outcomes and higher satisfaction levels.
Navigating Challenges: Mental Health, Legislation, and the Prison System in B...Guillermo Rivera
This conference will delve into the intricate intersections between mental health, legal frameworks, and the prison system in Bolivia. It aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the current challenges faced by mental health professionals working within the legislative and correctional landscapes. Topics of discussion will include the prevalence and impact of mental health issues among the incarcerated population, the effectiveness of existing mental health policies and legislation, and potential reforms to enhance the mental health support system within prisons.
The Importance of Community Nursing Care.pdfAD Healthcare
NDIS and Community 24/7 Nursing Care is a specific type of support that may be provided under the NDIS for individuals with complex medical needs who require ongoing nursing care in a community setting, such as their home or a supported accommodation facility.