As OSF HealthCare works to improve the health of the communities it serves, it’s imperative our organization use every resource available to get a complete picture of our patients. Only a small percent of an individual’s data that impacts their health outcomes comes from our own electronic medical record. To gain a full perspective of the factors that affect someone’s health, we have to look outside of the walls of our health care system.
Leading these efforts is the Healthcare Analytics team, a part of OSF Innovation, which brings data from a variety of sources that is complex and noisy, and integrates it with internal information to make up a flexible, continuously evolving data ecosystem. The complex data sources are curated and translated to reveal insights about our patients and organization as a whole.
Combining financial, clinical, social and operational data into one place puts our team at the forefront in the way we gather and analyze information. This valuable method of data collection helps OSF HealthCare make the right decisions to improve operations and support our patients towards healthier lives.
How we use the data
Our data ecosystem is continuously updating a variety of valuable information on a daily basis, allowing our leaders access to the most current data needed to solve challenges within the Ministry. This information gives decision-makers trending details so they can put new processes or tools in place when needed. It also gives them a 360 degree focus around our patients and providers.
A great example of this work is reducing the risk of hospital readmissions. Every morning, clinicians are provided a readmission risk score for each of the patients they are serving within a hospital. Knowing this information allows our providers the insight to better manage high-risk patients and be proactive in follow-up visits.
Providing the right care and access for our patients is another area where integrating data has been very insightful. Some of our facilities’ capacity was previously tracked manually in spreadsheets, making it difficult to record current bed availability before a patient was moved to a larger facility.
The Healthcare Analytics team built a reliable digital system to track the data and provide insights, so the health care system could answer a variety of questions, such as what types of patients were being re-directed, where they were coming from and who denied them. The goal is to analyze the data, find opportunities for access and implement solutions, improving capacity management.
Improving patient experience
If you consider your experience on retail sites like Amazon, you’ll recognize these companies already know your preferences, and will make recommendations based on those preferences. We are utilizing similar technology, integrating external and internal data to provide improved outcomes and experiences.
Merging these data sources allows us to create a patient story with critical data for our front line care givers so they know you. Our work in OSF Innovation, through Healthcare Analytics is creating greater insights, allowing us to make crucial decisions earlier and with greater focus than ever before. We do this all in the effort to help you live healthier lives, today and tomorrow.
In future blogs, we will call out some of the key techniques, processes, tools and more that enable a data-centric culture.
Last Updated: August 30, 2018