ArborMetrix’s Registry Solution Enhances Quality, Lower Cost of Surgical Care
The Michigan Bariatric Surgery Collaborative (MBSC) and the Michigan Surgical Quality Collaborative (MSQC) have selected ArborMetrix, a provider of real-time, cloud-based analytics solutions for acute and specialty care, to help accelerate their surgical care quality improvement efforts. Using ArborMetrix’s performance analytics engine, the two Michigan collaboratives will provide hospitals and clinicians with timely, risk-adjusted information about their comparative quality, utilization, and costs.
The programs will enable hospitals to use clinical outcomes data from thousands of patients to help understand and implement best practices. ArborMetrix has the only solution that dynamically benchmarks hospital and physician performance in real-time, essential for tracking the effect of quality improvement interventions. Unlike other registries, the ArborMetrix platform also allows MBSC’s 40 hospital members and MSQC’s 52 hospital members to drill down through their data, helping them see patterns in sub-specialty care, with specific procedures and even individual patients.
“Our hospital members and their medical staff are excited to be taking this next important step in developing and disseminating best practices, an approach that has already lowered mortality rates, reduced infections and returned significant savings to hospitals across Michigan,” said MSQC Program Director Darrell Campbell, Jr., M.D., who is also chief medical officer for the University of Michigan Health System, the coordinating center for 11 of the state’s 12 Collaborative Quality Initiatives (CQIs), including MSQC and MBSC. “ArborMetrix’s scientifically rigorous analytics, configurability and speed-to-value made it the obvious choice for powering a regional registry that will allow MSQC and MBSC to analyze precise data and best practices for physicians and hospitals.”
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan announced in April that four of the CQIs, including MBSC and MSQC, had produced $232.8 million in healthcare cost savings and lowered complication and mortality rates for thousands of patients. The ArborMetrix registry solution was designed to enhance the efficiency of administering these programs and, with more effective performance feedback, accelerate improvement efforts.
Members of MSQC and MBSC who participate in the new registries will also take advantage of other new analytic tools from ArborMetrix that will help them successfully respond to new challenges associated with health reform and improve healthcare efficiency.
ArborMetrix’s analytics platform, developed by clinician researchers with decades of experience operating large population-based clinical registries and scientific performance measurement tools, delivers additional capabilities including:
- Real-time personalized prognoses and predictive risks of clinical procedures, tailored to individual patients, enabling better treatment decisions
- Tools for tracking episode-based bundled payments for various specialty service lines, conditions and procedures
- A patient portal allowing clinicians to track patient-centered outcomes and enhance patient engagement in managing their own care
“We look forward to working with Michigan surgeons and giving them the tools they need to discover and implement best surgical practices and improve patients’ lives and to provide significant cost savings to hospitals immediately by reducing costly surgical complications,” said ArborMetrix CEO Brett Furst. “As payers increasingly link reimbursement to the quality of care delivered, physicians and hospitals need to understand their comparative quality and resource utilization. Our clinical analytics platform will enable the MBSC and MSQC programs to meet those needs and so their members can deliver the most effective, cost-efficient care possible.”
About Michigan Bariatric Surgeons Collaborative
MBSC aims to advance the science and practice of bariatric surgery in Michigan and across the United States. Led by Dr. Nancy Birkmeyer, a clinical epidemiologist at the University of Michigan, the program is a unique partnership between Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan, researchers at the University of Michigan, and clinicians from the 40 bariatric surgery programs across the state. Started in 2006, MBSC rests on the core pillars of collaborative quality improvement: collection of detailed clinical data on outcomes and practice; timely, rigorous performance feedback to clinicians; and continuous improvement based on empirical analysis and collaborative learning. For more information, visit https://michiganbsc.org/Registry.
About Michigan Surgical Quality Collaborative
The Michigan Surgical Quality Collaborative (MSQC) was founded in 2005 under the sponsorship of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Blue Care Network (BCBSM / BCN). Through the leadership of Darrell Campbell Jr., M.D., Program Director, the MSQC has focused on real-world improvements in surgical outcomes. This approach has made MSQC a model of successful regional teamwork for hospitals nationwide. MSQC has grown from 16 hospitals in 2007 to 52 MI hospitals currently. Plans for hospitals and collaboratives outside Michigan to join MSQC are moving forward. For more information, visit http://www.msqc.org.
About ArborMetrix
ArborMetrix, Inc., based in Ann Arbor, Mich., is a healthcare analytics and software firm specializing in measurement of hospital and specialty-based care. The company focuses on developing rigorous data analysis and actionable business intelligence solutions, which deliver cost and quality performance metrics for hospitals, hospital systems, health plans and professional associations. For more information, visit www.arbormetrix.com.