Analytics

(SPONSORED) Healthcare organizations are focused on patient care and health outcomes, and rightfully so, but financial well-being is equally important for organizations to continue to provide the highest quality care.

The technology delivers stream analytics designed to unlock insights into the relationship between IT performance and clinical workflows, the vendor said.

Leading health IT vendors get in precision medicine game at White House Summit, including Allscripts, athenahealth, McKesson.

3M Health Information Systems plans to unveil the latest module in its 360 Encompass Health Analytics Suite early next week at HIMSS16 in Las Vegas. Physician Compare integrates with the company’s Potentially Preventable Readmissions and Potentially Preventable Complications grouping software, according to materials Healthcare IT News obtained ahead of the launch. Taken together, the risk analysis methodologies enable hospitals to audit doctors to identify avoidable events, notably admissions, emergency room visits, hospital-acquired complications and preventable readmissions. [Poll: What topics will define HIMSS16?] Physician compare brings reports for gauging physicians’ efficiency and performance compared to peers, measuring which resources they use and how those impact outcomes – as well as enabling users to identify tactics for improving physician performance. Another pre-packaged report focuses on what the company called “patient acuity” through avoidable care, admissions and healthcare costs. Released in the summer of 2015, the 3M Encompass Health Analytics Suite also includes State Compare and Patient Compare modules for benchmarking hospital quality performance and patients’ perspective on costs, performance and length of stay. The former is why University Health System in San Antonio, Texas reached out to 3M. Well, that and a little philosophy called the Triple Aim, said Camerino Salazar, senior director of health analytics at UHS. [Also: 21 awesome photos from past HIMSS conferences] “We initially used 3M software to help with reporting for the 1115 state Medicaid waiver,” Salazar explained. “Now that we’ve been operationalizing the analytics dashboard it’s a way to monitor performance and identify the areas where we need to improve quality.” Salazar’s colleague Heidy Colon-Lugo, a senior quality data analyst in the UHS health analytics unit, added that UHS has the Physician Compare module and “physicians can use it to track their own progress,” though the hospital has not yet put it into production at an enterprise level. “We see it as a tool that could be very beneficial on inpatient reporting. It’s on the to-do list – and it’s a gauge for population health management,” Salazar explained because it helps UHS track performance and quality. “If we’re doing a good job of care management and providing timely preventable care, that’s an avenue of keeping people healthy. We’re the downstream so if things are operating well we should see those changes to readmissions, costs, the Triple Aim.” Twitter: @SullyHIT This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

Advanced data analytics may hold the power to help predict likely prescription drug abuse in patients, a needed breakthrough as an opioid epidemic sweeps the country.  The problem is "no longer just heroin and cocaine; it's prescription drugs,” said Jaya Tripathi, principal investigator at the MITRE Corp. “If you look at the trends, despite the overwhelming focus and funds, more needs to be done." [Poll: What topics will define HIMSS16?] Her team at MITRE researched public and private stakeholders and interviewed board members and law enforcement officials and others over the course of 18 months. The interviews revealed ways to carry out implementation with a broad approach. In a Wednesday morning session at HIMSS16, “Data Analytics Takes the Pain out of Pain Pill Management,” Tripathi plans to discuss advanced analytics and the ways it can predict drug abusers. She'll also talk about some Big Data challenges and how to overcome them. MITRE operates multiple, federally funded research and development centers and a robust research program. Tripathi's prescription drug project began three years ago, while she's been in the analytics field for a decade. [Also: 21 awesome photos from past HIMSS conferences] Tripathi said the study demonstrated provider challenges, especially in the emergency room, to differentiate the symptoms of similar patients, when prescribing medications. "They do a lot of subjective interpretation," Tripathi said. "There are vital disagreements on how to handle it." "I wanted to solve this problem and look at all current solutions, identify gaps and what we need," Tripathi added, saying a better predictive approach would provide the necessary empirical data. "Data is everything, but you can do better if you know the right techniques," Tripathi said. "If your data is poor, your models will only go so far." Tripathi noted that each pharmacy must report every controlled-drug prescription to the state, as much as once every 24 hours. Her project has found access to analytics data of this resource at the point-of-sale can make sure the drugs are making it into the right hands and in the right amount. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] "We had a lot of information, like drug interaction — so when you outline that you get a much bigger picture," Tripathi said.  "People have done a lot of work out there and sometimes one technique will inform the other. But it also needs to be usable." Tripathi’s session, “Data Analytics Takes the Pain out of Pain Management,” is scheduled for March 2, 2016 from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. at the Sands Expo Convention Center Palazzo D. Twitter: @JessiefDavis This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

Healthcare innovation across the United States is being powered by a number of factors – including technology, legislation and the move toward value-based reimbursement – but the engine driving that transformation is data. Not only can data be collected and stored to an extent that wasn’t possible several years ago, it also can be analyzed to uncover population health trends, improve efficiency, reduce costs and deliver better care to patients. See all of our HIMSS16 previews “The starting point is having robust healthcare data from every ZIP code,” said Maureen Sullivan, chief strategy officer for Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. “We are already using this data to help improve healthcare, and we can learn from those efforts.” Sullivan will share examples of how Blue Cross Blue Shield companies are using data to help employers, providers and individuals in a session titled “The Power of Data to Transform Healthcare” at HIMSS16. BCBSA is a national federation of 36 independent, community-based and locally operated Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies. The Blue System is the nation's largest health insurer, covering more than 106 million people, and also is the nation’s largest single processor of Medicare claims. [Poll: What topics will define HIMSS16?] The BCBSA healthcare database is massive, combining cost information from 2.3 billion medical procedures, provider information, and patient reviews. The data provides BCBSA actionable insight on cost and quality trends, enabling it to advance care delivery, empower informed decision-making and improve the health of Americans. “At Blue Cross Blue Shield, we are committed to a data-driven healthcare system,” Sullivan said. “We have already made great strides to harness the power of healthcare data by building a comprehensive dataset and mining it for important insights and trends. Building on those assets and efforts will continue to drive the changes we need to ensure our healthcare system is sustainable.” Sullivan’s session will delve into a data analytics approach that brings value to both employers and employees, investigate solutions that enable consumers to make evidence-based decisions and show how aggregating cost data can help providers contain costs while better managing care. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] “This is an exciting time in healthcare, and we have tremendous opportunities ahead,” Sullivan said. “Moving forward, we have more work to do to pull even greater insights and intelligence from healthcare data.” “The Power of Data to Transform Healthcare” will be held on Tuesday, March 1 from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. PST at the Sands Expo Convention Center, Palazzo E. Twitter: @SullyHIT This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

While early-adopting healthcare organizations are seeing strategic value by leveraging predictive analytics to inform their plans and programs, most providers are only in the initial phases of implementation. “The question in healthcare now is how to budget and manage care with the proliferation of new data,” said Scott Allister, senior manager of health analytics with Accenture. “What do we do about it?” [Also: NorthShore University Health System leverages predictive modeling] Allister said the value of predictive analytics for providers is becoming more apparent every day. Providers are exploring multiple uses for analytics, he added, such as “how you work with analytics, including how you can manage medication, how you can set up your infrastructure, how you can govern your data in specific ways, and how you manage the culture of the enterprise.” The transition to a service informed by predictive analytics, however, is not always easy. Organizational silos must be broken down, and new ways of decisionmaking enacted. “This is a journey,” Allister said. Among the hospitals making great strides in adoption of analytics, Allister said, is Presbyterian Healthcare Services in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a private, nonprofit healthcare system with eight hospitals, a statewide health plan and a multi-specialty medical group. [Also: 21 awesome photos from past HIMSS conferences] Allister, along with Soyal Momin, vice president of analytics at Presbyterian Healthcare Services, will show how Presbyterian has moved toward an integrated system in a presentation at HIMSS16, which kicks off in late February. Their talk, “Data and Analytics Done Right: Driving Value Creation” will examine how the healthcare provider recognized the need to optimize the growing amounts of electronic data that it was capturing, and thus sought a data and analytics transformation strategy. Among the points covered in the talk will be how to recognize the changing data and analytics requirements faced by healthcare providers with health plans, as well and assessing the benefits an end-to-end data and analytics transformation can deliver. See all of our HIMSS16 previews Allister said that Presbyterian so far has overcome many of the barriers often facing providers as they adopt an analytics strategy. “They recognized the problems of really getting value out of data,” he said. “A lot of organizations have plans, but Presbyterian stuck to it and they are starting to show some important results.” The session “Data and Analytics Done Right: Driving Value Creation,” is scheduled to take place on March 2, from 10-11 a.m. in the Sands Expo Convention Center Marcello 4401. Twitter: @HealthITNews This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.

A clinical professor at the school will discuss at HIMSS16 how a combination of people, process and technology drove success.

Healthcare organizations are making big investments in population health and patient engagement platforms as they prepare to move past meaningful use and toward value-based reimbursement, according to "The Big Mega HIT Purchasing Report" released Monday by market research firm peer60. Electronic health records remain core to healthcare IT, according to the report, which gathered 567 responses from CEOs, CIOs, nursing and financial leaders and others with purchasing authority at hospitals and medical practices. However,many customers are still dissatisfied with their products. Projected EHR replacement rates for 2016 show 23 percent of health providers (inpatient and outpatient combined) planning to look for new vendors, according to peer60. [Also: Hospitals keeping close eye on revenue cycle vendors] Still, "population health and patient engagement are the hottest areas by a wide margin," wrote peer60 executive vice president Chris Jensen in the report. "It’s really no surprise these two segments continue to lead the way among hospital IT upgrades considering their impact on successful migration to value-based care and value-based purchasing." As for pop health, peer60s sees some stabilization in contracting plans. In 2015, roughly 25 percent of providers were certain they'd keep their population health vendor; in 2016, that amount has doubled. "The pressure is on for vendors that have not already made their mark in this market because they’re about to be squeezed by increasing renewal rates and a declining pool of hospitals that have not already adopted," said Jensen. [Also: New trends ahead for imaging informatics] But when it comes to patient engagement, authors see the opposite. "More enterprise vendors are capturing more of the minds of providers, while interest in the best of breed crowd is beginning to dwindle," Jensen said. Other big purchasing trends are also unsurprising. Data security, enterprise analytics and revenue cycle management are all in play. Security technology, especially, has seen a big jump in provider interest. "In 2015 it was at the bottom of the list of top IT priorities and placed third this year," said Jensen. "Since this is not a growth market with 90 percent of hospitals already employing a true data security solution, the jump in interest in this area likely means the replacement market for more robust solutions in this very critical segment is heating up. Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN

(SPONSORED) Millions of people are struggling with conditions caused by neurological damage or disease. The future of treatment for many may not lie not in new and different drugs but in smart devices that can monitor, interpret and generate neurological signals. Data analytics is making these treatments possible.