HealtheConnections introduces new analytics tool myData

Innovative application provides actionable patient information for healthcare providers, networks

HealtheConnections, a regional health improvement organization in New York state, recently introduced their value-based care analytics tool myData. The application allows healthcare providers to easily access and understand comprehensive data in their patients’ profiles, identify gaps in care and see how they rank in quality measures.

For today’s healthcare professionals, ensuring visibility into their patient panel, measuring patient outcomes and providing proof that they have accurately met quality performance measures are major concerns. Many single electronic medical record (EMR) systems do not contain all of the historical or community medical information necessary to see a complete picture of a patient’s needs.
When a patient sees another doctor or is admitted to the hospital, that visit or event may not be shared with their full care team, which leaves providers with informational gaps that hinder their ability to identify and quickly rectify emerging issues.

MyData combines HIE data and provider data to deliver insights to participants in responsive, user-friendly dashboards and reports. This makes information easier to access, interpret and track.

“Organized, actionable information is paramount, and there is a critical need for analytics and data stratification tools,” Rob Hack, president and CEO of HealtheConnections, said. “We worked with provider partners to develop this application with practicality, efficiency and ease of use at the forefront. Give us your data, and we’ll give it back to you in an organized format with community-wide data you didn’t have before.”

MyData builds upon the aggregated data in HealtheConnections’ HIE, collected from throughout its 26-county service area, New York state databases and national databases. HealtheConnections houses the largest collection of patient data in its supported region, and offers the ability to query across the state.

“We don’t have a problem with data, we have a problem with information,” David Page, MD, of FamilyCare Medical Group said. “This allows me to look at my panel of patients, to identify and take action on a population of patients that have unaddressed needs. I have a visibility I’ve never had before, and that’s the true value of myData.”

HealtheConnections and its provider partners like Page developed the application to use information for population health management, supporting the growing provider, care management and payer needs of value-based payment systems. myData features three tools: community health dashboards, quality measures and data discovery.

MyData’s community health dashboards leverage HealtheConnections’ clinical and data quality knowledge for three primary medical concerns: hypertension, diabetes and high hospital utilization. These registries based upon contributed community data help providers get the most complete picture of their patient panel.

HealtheConnections is a qualified certified data registry (QCDR) by Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS). MyData’s quality measurement tool provides certified and/or proxy measures with associated dashboards, based on NCQA-certified electronic clinical quality measures.

Data discovery is a query tool that integrates and organizes provider and community-wide patient data to allow a user to ask questions about their patients’ demographics, medications and more—without needing an inside analytics team, often out of reach for smaller organizations.

“This is moving beyond the core HIE,” Hack says. “We’re maximizing the value a healthcare provider can get out of the data that’s already available. We’re turning it into useful information that helps the provider, the patient and the overall health of our communities.”

HIEs present opportunities to improve care, lower costs and enhance the overall healthcare experience of patients and providers. More than 10,000 providers and almost every hospital in the HealtheConnections service area participate with the HIE, with more than 400 of those organizations contributing data.

MyData is currently available in Central New York, and will be rolled out to other regions throughout the year.