The Current Buzz around Analytics

Rodney Hamilton, MD, CMIO, ICA

Read part 1 of this series

As we round the corner to soon approach HIMSS13, John Moore of Chilmark Research reported from HIMSS12 that the “conference buzz was analytics. [It] seemed as if every vendor in attendance was promoting some sort of analytics capability. It was a tad overwhelming and if I was having a problem trying to separate out all these countless vendor offerings (this is exactly what I am trained to do as an industry analyst) I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for those representatives of healthcare IT departments.”[1]

As it turns out, clinical analytics, and its broader umbrella, business intelligence, is more than a buzz.  More than 80 percent of healthcare organizations are investing in business intelligence tools for clinical performance improvement, according to a new report from the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA).[2] About a quarter are spending money for data warehouses, and a slightly smaller portion is also buying new ‘costing systems’. Despite the low percentage of institutions that have the latter capability, the HFMA points out that they will need it to succeed in a value-based payment environment.

“Very small percentages of respondents today have significant ability to attribute per patient costs across the care continuum and few organizations are able to quantify the financial impact of quality improvements,” the report noted. “This skill will be important as organizations determine how to reduce their cost structure over time to remain market-competitive.”[3]

Making these challenges more acute is the rise of forward thinking accountable care models such as patient-centered medical homes and ACOs. These models of care and reimbursement require the sharing of comprehensive patient data among care teams, health plans, and government entities. The operating environment may consist of various EHR systems, a regional HIE, multiple hospital information systems and departmental applications all deployed within the same integrated delivery network (IDN). However, responsibility for providing data and making clinical decisions is shared among acute care, post-acute care, long-term care, primary care, and specialty providers. Yet these teams may not have the data-sharing and communication tools they need.[4] A recent randomized controlled trial sponsored by Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and published in JAMIA confirms that while “clinical decision support lists are critical for patient care, clinical decision support, population reporting, quality improvement, research and problem lists are often incomplete or out of date.”[5] This incompleteness results in less than effective diagnosis and treatment of patients that can impair outcomes and increase redundancies and costs.

… Stay tuned for Part Three