Collecting, aggregating, and reporting clinical quality metrics can be a manual, costly process for many healthcare organizations, but it is critical for continuous quality improvement efforts. Orlando Health invested significant time and resources in manually collecting and validating data across multiple EHRs. By leveraging the Health Catalyst® Data Platform, the organization improved its clinical and quality data reporting efficiency, automating data aggregation and standardizing reporting workflows. Orlando Health can now focus on using data insights to drive quality initiatives rather than just meeting reporting requirements, positively impacting patient care across specialties.
The burden of quality data reporting frequently diverts precious time from continuous quality improvement work to paperwork. U.S. hospitals can easily spend more than 100,000 manual labor hours and over five million dollars annually collecting, aggregating, and reporting data for just 160 quality metrics.1
Orlando Health has a long history of being focused on quality improvement. As part of its commitment to providing high-quality care, the organization tracked and submitted data to external organizations, allowing it to benchmark performance.
While external benchmarking was helpful, the processes for collecting and submitting data involved manual data collection and validation across multiple EHRs, with little consistency in data sources, queries, or methods. The lack of standardization and data integration caused delays, rework, and limited ability to use the data for continuous quality improvement.
Orlando Health needed a standardized, automated approach that could deliver trusted, real-time performance insight and support care teams in moving from reactive data management to leveraging insights to enable continuous performance improvement.
Orlando Health used the Health Catalyst® Data Platform to transform how it handled clinical and quality data reporting, turning a manual burden into actionable insight. It replaced manual data pulls and spreadsheets with automation, transitioning from manual, survey-driven data pulls to automated, standardized data pipelines in the data platform. Data from Orlando Health’s EHRs and clinical systems are aggregated and visualized in an analytics application, streamlining data validation and reporting workflows. The analytics application is aligned with external benchmarking requirements, enabling quality teams to move from manual reconciliation to automated validation logic.
Quality teams can easily identify, validate, and submit performance data, and continuously monitor compliance and performance metrics across specialties. With the reporting burden reduced, clinical and quality leaders shifted resources that had been needed for reporting performance to using insights to identify and understand variation, track trends, and implement continuous improvement initiatives.
The organization implemented improvement initiatives in key service lines and specialties, including neurosurgery, neurology, and orthopedics, focusing on using its resources to impact outcomes positively. Rather than waiting for annual ranking results, leaders and improvement teams use the analytics application to monitor and improve performance and accurately forecast ranking outcomes across specialties.
By using the Health Catalyst® Data Platform, Orlando Health transformed quality data workflows, freed up valuable resources, and unlocked the ability to use data continuously—not just retrospectively. The organization meaningfully improved performance, resulting in:
Orlando Health now spends significantly fewer staff hours on manual collection, aggregation, and reporting of clinical and quality data, accelerating cycle times and reducing the risk of error.
"Health Catalyst has helped us move from data reaction to prediction and continuous quality performance improvement. We’ve empowered our teams to invest in what matters most—improving care, outcomes, and our competitive standing."
- Jill Dykstra-Nykanen, RN, MSN, CPHQ, Assistant Vice President, System Quality, Regulatory, and Safety Performance, Orlando Health
Orlando Health plans to expand analytics further and use its data for deeper, continuous process improvement.
