There’s no denying the invaluable role information technology plays in advancing value-based care delivery. What leadership teams seem to be waking up to is the need to create a framework to help manage IT initiatives at an organizational level.
“IT is involved in changing the way health care functions — a role that we in IT did not see coming,” says Doris Peek, senior vice president and chief information officer, Broward Health, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. With the changes needed to support marketplace reforms, the organization’s leadership recognized the value of data governance and applying analytics to the entire organization.
The Analytics Center of Excellence at Cadence Health, Winfield, Ill., is being developed with an eye on the disciplines of data governance, stewardship and quality. The goal is to understand requirements prior to diving into the process of mining data. “Better questions lead to better answers,” says Dan Kinsella, executive vice president and CIO.
IT Governance Checklist
•Centralize oversight to create a strong partnership between administrative and clinical leadership
•Prioritize key clinical and quality questions for population management
•Invest in staffing and tools for analysis
•Use a physician champion to solidify physician buy-in and dispel criticism
•Phase roll-out to physicians, emphasizing data as insight, not judgment
•Encourage physicians to scrutinize data and ask questions
•House data in a format that lends itself to data analysis
•Use discrete data fields to capture information
•Provide analytic re- sources to translate the clinical priorities into the right set of reports
