There are arguments to be made on both sides when it comes to who should own analytics in a hospital or health system: the CIO or the CFO. It’s different at healthcare organizations across the country. And it depends on varying factors. But there also is an argument to be made for shared ownership.
This is the story of how two healthcare providers – the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington and Northeast Georgia Health System in Gainesville – handle the ownership of analytics within their organizations.
Prior to picking a CIO or CFO
Before the question of ownership arises, who is it that does the majority of analytics work within the organization, the CIO or the CFO?
“As a prominent academic medical center, the University of Connecticut Health Center is committed to transforming healthcare delivery by developing a robust digital healthcare ecosystem that includes a multitude of digital services and platforms,” said Bruce Metz, CIO at the University of Connecticut Health Center. “The overall vision and strategy is driven by collaborative efforts of all key stakeholders that put patients and their communities at the center.”
As healthcare becomes more digitized, the collection, sharing and analysis of diverse, complex data forms the foundation of the ecosystem, including analytics initiatives designed to achieve cost, quality and patient experience objectives, he added.
“In view of this approach, clinical, operational and IT executives at UConn Health, such as the CFO and CIO, are equally involved in developing and deriving value from analytics capabilities,” he explained. “A partnership among the C-suite is considered essential to a unified enterprisewide program for data and information management that deals with organizational competencies and processes as well as the underlying technologies.”
This partnership enables each executive to take the lead in aspects of the analytics strategy closely aligned with their area of expertise. For example, the CIO provides leadership in reinventing the organization’s information architecture to support massive amounts of data produced and shared across the enterprise, he said.
Other C-level members, such as the CFO, provide leadership within an information governance framework for identifying analytics investments that yield the most significant contribution to clinical and operational performance, he added.
Chris Paravate, CIO at Northeast Georgia Health System, said analytics work at his organization is primarily supported out of both the informatics and technology services division as well as the finance division.
Informatics and technology services responsibilities include: quality and clinical performance metrics, dashboards and reporting tools; EHR dashboard tools, workflow integration and decision support for acute, ambulatory and business support services; predictive analytics including integration within the EHR; population health analytics for the health plan and ACO; and data management, including virtual and physical data repositories and lakes and data integration for decision support.
Finance responsibilities include: financial prospective, ROI analysis; volume and budget analytics; labor/budget/cost management analytics; costing, financial decision support; payer contract performance, at-risk contract performance management; and dashboard tools to support cost accounting, operating expense management.
Getting to common ground
Both of these healthcare provider organizations are doing a lot of analytics work on clinical, financial and other subjects. And there are many common reports from around the organization where analytics play an important role.
“Like almost every health system in the country, we are focused on reducing our costs and improving our access,” said Paravate of Northeast Georgia Health System. “We have developed several tools to support our acute care operations to improve our patient experience and reduce cost.”
These tools help benchmark inpatient care management and improve discharge planning. They also have developed several tools to improve patient experience in ambulatory care operations. By learning patient preferences, the organization has been able to optimize its EHR and improve access and delivery, Paravate said.
While analytics capabilities keep advancing, a central premise of the analytics program at UConn Health is balancing the latest technology trends with business-driven impact and measurable business outcomes, said Metz of the University of Connecticut Health Center.
“Key to this approach is a flexible, tiered service model where there is regular interaction among users who identify requirements; analysts who understand and can translate the business context; and developers capable of handling more complex requests,” he said. “These interactions can take different forms.”
“Launching a successful analytics program starts with an understanding that the undertaking is much more than a technology initiative, requiring the commitment and participation of all members of the C-suite.”
Bruce A. Metz, University of Connecticut Health Center
For example, users might access support through designated reporting and analytics teams. Analytics teams can also advise on existing tools or reports, and develop new reports. Throughout the process, technical staff can concentrate on managing or enhancing data as well as analytics tools, while resolving problems and providing guidance.
“At this stage of UConn Health’s analytics journey, common reports span a number of major areas including: clinical, for example, clinical quality, outcome measures; financial, for example, revenue cycle tracking; operational, for example, measurement and management of daily activity; and enterprisewide, for example, organizational performance, metrics specific to selected organizational areas,” Metz said.
Methods for creating and publishing reports span a multitude of modalities ranging from straightforward lists to predefined templates with real-time data, large data sets (for instance, multi-year) analyses, specialized dashboards, and exports that leverage multiple datasets.
“The importance of each method stems from the ways that data is put together and presented to create information,” he said. “The analytic capabilities are at the core of providing new insights that get woven into operational activities to drive value and better decisions. As members of the C-suite and their teams become adept at descriptive, historical reporting, the goal is to move into predictive and prescriptive analytics that spot conditions, identify patterns and anticipate outcomes leading to even higher levels of performance for the organization.”
Click on page 2 below to read about co-ownership and stewardship, and more.
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