How Data Analytics Will Improve Patient Care

In this Q&A with Christopher Rafter, chief operating officer of Tampa-based Inzata Analytics, he speaks about the future of data analytics in healthcare and how they can improve the effectiveness of patient care.

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Value-Based Metrics Penalize Top-Performing Hospitals

Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston found that hospitals awarded by the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology for their high-quality care for acute myocardial infarction and heart failure were more likely to be financially penalized under value-based programs than other hospitals.

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Close the Loop on Test Results

Serious problems can occur when results are delayed. Patients can undergo the wrong operation, be prescribed the wrong medication, or be discharged when they actually require urgent care. A delay in test results can mean the difference between a treatable problem evolving into an inoperable one.

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Quality Measures and Improvement in Addiction Treatment

Historically, alcohol or drug use has been used as the primary measure of outcome in clinical trials, but how it has been measured has varied. Alcohol and drug use have been measured in varying ways: for example, as a percentage reduction in use over varying periods of time, number of days of abstinence over varying periods of time, or percentage of days abstinent over varying periods of time.

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Industry Focus: Q&A: How to Improve Patient Handoffs

These transfers can be as dramatic as air-lifting a patient to a remote specialty hospital and telling the EMTs that the patient thinks he can fly and will try to jump out of the helicopter, or as mundane as a nurse ending her shift and telling her replacement the patient has been taken off a certain medicine. In both cases, not passing on this information can potentially harm the patient.

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PSQH Innovation Award Winner: Cleveland Clinic Develops Algorithm to Power Early Warning System

The hospital and health system set up an early warning system (EWS) as a way to alert nurses to subtle changes in patient condition. But alerts alone aren’t enough, so they also developed an integrated workflow that supports patient assessment, contextual evaluation of clinical data, provider notification, interdisciplinary collaboration, and timely intervention.

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How is Your System Supporting Overwhelmed Physicians?

Even though there’s more data than ever, few organizations have updated their processes for managing this information overload. But that’s beginning to change. Health systems are finding ways to ease physicians’ burden with solutions that include restructuring staff and putting tools in place to stem the tide of burnout.

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