Driving Healthcare Transformation with a New Operating Model and Advanced Analytics

HEALTHCARE TRANFORMATION IS CRITICAL

With healthcare waste in the U.S. reaching up to $930B annually, healthcare transformation isn’t optional—it’s essential.¹ INTEGRIS Health is advancing this transformation with a new operating model that uses data and analytics to guide decisions and continuously improve care across its system.

THE NEED FOR A NEW OPERATING MODEL

INTEGRIS Health was committed to improving performance but faced challenges. The organization lacked processes that would allow it to identify issues early, act on reliable data, and implement changes. Analytics were fragmented and siloed, unable to drive the scale of improvement the system required. Leadership recognized that achieving its vision required both a new operating model and robust analytics.

LAUNCHING A CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT OPERATING MODEL

Guided by a vision for zero harm, evidence-based quality, personalized experiences, accessible care, affordability, and engaged caregivers, INTEGRIS Health embarked on a systemwide transformation to become the most trusted partner for health in its community. Leadership developed and implemented the INTEGRIS Health Way, a continuous improvement operating model designed to hardwire alignment, accountability, and problem-solving across the system.

Key elements of the INTEGRIS Health Way include: strategy deployment, an annual process that aligns key performance indicators (KPIs), strategies, initiatives, and goals across all levels; visualizing and defining what success looks like for every department and team; a daily management system, where idea boards and daily huddles engage caregivers in identifying, prioritizing, and tracking improvements; problem solving and innovation; best practice sharing and adoption.

INTEGRIS Health partnered with Health Catalyst, deploying the Health Catalyst® Data Platform as the enterprise analytics platform, providing the high-quality data, analytics, and insights required to accelerate performance. INTEGRIS Health made analytics leadership an embedded capability. The role of chief analytics officer is filled by a Health Catalyst team member, ensuring the analytics strategy is deeply integrated with the system strategy. Additionally, a dedicated team of Health Catalyst analysts, through Tech-Enabled Managed Services, provides day-to-day analytics expertise, ensuring caregivers have timely insights readily available.

INTEGRIS Health uses numerous Health Catalyst products to support improvement efforts, including:

• The Health Catalyst Pop Insights™ application for system and entity KPI scorecards, which are identified, approved, and cascaded throughout the organization during the annual strategy deployment. The organization can easily visualize performance and determine where it is hitting or missing targets, enabling prompt intervention if performance is not delivering the desired results.
• The Readmission Explorer Analytics Accelerator automates insights into readmission performance. Previously, the 30-day readmission rate was rising, with no discernible resolution. Identifying root causes required time-intensive manual data-gathering and reporting. Using the analytics application, care teams can easily explore metrics, identify drivers of readmission, prioritize improvement efforts, and implement interventions to prevent readmissions.
• A Care Gap Analyzer identifies patients with care gaps and generates call lists that caregivers use to engage with patients to close care gaps. The organization can view provider and clinic-level performance. Leaders focus improvement efforts on providers and clinics with the largest care gaps, sharing best practices from top-performers, and using those best practices to facilitate care gap closure.
• The Health Catalyst PowerLabor™ application provides INTEGRIS Health with the actionable data required to improve labor management and decrease costs while meeting increased patient services demand. Leaders can drill into data and review job codes and positions across various hospitals and departments and use capacity and demand planning analytics enabled by Healthcare.AI™ to align labor utilization with patient needs. The organization improved admission inefficiencies and increased the daily number of patients seen.

RESULTS

By aligning daily improvement with advanced analytics, INTEGRIS Health achieved measurable, enterprise-wide outcomes, including:

• $177M in continuous financial improvement over three years. Caregivers have implemented >116K improvement ideas over the last 6.5 years. Engagement scores increased from the 35th percentile to the top decile nationally. Highlights include:
  
  • $2.7M cost savings, the result of achieving a 0.96 readmission observed-to-expected ratio and avoiding more than 250 readmissions over 20 months.
    
    • 33 percent relative reduction in the time required to audit readmission events. Nearly 100 percent of readmission events are audited.
  • $2.2M increase in revenue and 55K care gaps closed.
    
    • >1.5 star increase in Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Star Rating, achieving >4.5 Stars.
  • $30M labor cost savings.
    
    • 50 percent reduction in external and internal contingent staff spend.
    • Five percent relative decrease in cost per adjusted discharge.
    • Six percent relative increase in the number of adjusted discharges.

"By embedding Health Catalyst as our analytics partner, we created a seamless bridge between strategy, execution, and measurable results.”
- Timothy Pehrson, MHSA, President and CEO, INTEGRIS Health

WHAT’S NEXT

Building on the momentum of the analytics-enabled INTEGRIS Health Way, INTEGRIS Health is focused on deepening and sustaining transformation across the enterprise. Priorities include further expanding advanced analytics deeper into strategy, strengthening caregiver-driven improvement, and scaling financial sustainability efforts.

REFERENCES

1. Shrank, W. H., et al. (2019). Waste in the US health care system: Estimated costs and potential for savings. JAMA, 322(15), 1501–1509. Retrieved from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31589283/

ADDITIONAL READING

• Improved Labor Cost Management Saves $30M and Boosts Employee Retention
• Data-Informed Excellence: Transforming Patient Care by Closing Care Gaps
• Data and Analytics Platform Delivers $3M in Annual Savings and Increases Capacity for Improvement
• AI-Powered Benchmarking Transforms Data into Insight, Improving Organizational Effectiveness
• Notes from the Field: 7 Questions with Lisa Olenski, Vice President, Continuous Improvement & Data Analytics, Integris Health

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