Health Catalyst Congratulates North Memorial Health Care on Earning a Healthcare Informatics Innovation Award

Minnesota health system recognized for improving quality and cutting costs with data warehousing and clinical analytics initiative

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Health Catalyst

Feb 25, 2014, 07:11 ET

ORLANDO, Fla., Feb. 25, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Health Catalyst, the leader in healthcare data warehousing and analytics, today congratulated North Memorial Health Care on being named one of the nation's most innovative healthcare organizations by Healthcare Informatics magazine. North Memorial Medical Director of Clinical Quality Jeffrey Vespa, MD and Jon Nielsen, MD accepted the award February 24 in a ceremony held during the HIMSS14 Annual Conference in Orlando.

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The two-hospital 512-bed health system in metropolitan Minneapolis-St. Paul shared second place in the annual Healthcare Informatics Innovator Awards with Maimonides Medical Center in New York City. The Innovator Awards recognize leadership teams from hospitals, medical groups, integrated health systems, and other healthcare organizations that have effectively deployed information technology to improve clinical, administrative, financial, or organizational performance.

In recognizing North Memorial, the magazine's judges cited its data-driven quality improvement program, which has delivered significant clinical improvements and cost savings. Results from the initiative include:

A 75 percent reduction in the rate of elective early-term deliveries, earning a significant bonus payment from a key payer
A 35 percent reduction in the rate of chronic lung disease among premature babies
A 55 percent drop in the number of patients with low-risk chest pain who were admitted to the hospital for observation; and a 65 percent reduction in the amount of time admitted patients spent under observation

"At a time when providers are under increasing pressure to improve quality while lowering costs, North Memorial's quality improvement program stands as an example for hospitals everywhere who seek to combine technology with new governance structures to build a truly data-driven culture of value," said Dan Burton, CEO of Health Catalyst. "These results are only the beginning; North Memorial's clinical improvement teams continue to seek out new opportunities for improvement and to roll out further initiatives across virtually every clinical department."

North Memorial's quality improvement program began in 2007 as part of an effort to battle rising costs, stiff regional competition, and unpredictable reimbursement. In 2010, the health system deployed a technology-driven program to assist in launching clinical improvement initiatives across multiple departments simultaneously.

Specifically, the program incorporated the following elements:

An enterprise data warehouse (EDW) platform, which automated data distribution and eliminated the manual gathering of data from electronic health records and other enterprise applications. As a result, North Memorial's data analysts were freed to focus on uncovering patterns in the data and spotlighting opportunities for care improvements.
Advanced healthcare analytics applications to prioritize, track and interpret iterative improvement—critical to ensuring sustainable improvements.
Permanent, multi-disciplinary teams responsible for care improvement in a single care family (e.g., asthma). Working with near real-time data via easy-to-use dashboards, the teams were able to build evidence-based practices into providers' workflow and to standardize excellence.

Today, the program is active in nearly every major department at North Memorial.

About Health Catalyst

Based in Salt Lake City, Health Catalyst delivers a proven, Late-Binding™ Data Warehouse platform and analytic applications that actually work in today's transforming healthcare environment. Health Catalyst data warehouse platforms aggregate data utilized in population health and ACO projects in support of over 30 million unique patients. Health Catalyst platform clients operate over 135 hospitals and 1,700 clinics that account for over $130 billion in care delivered annually. Health Catalyst maintains a current KLAS customer satisfaction score of 90/100, received the highest vendor rating in Chilmark's 2013 Clinical Analytics Market Trends Report, and was selected as a 2013 Gartner Cool Vendor. Health Catalyst was also recognized in 2013 as one of the best places to work by both Modern Healthcare magazine and Utah Business magazine. Health Catalyst's platform and applications are being utilized at leading health systems including Allina Health, Crystal Run Healthcare, Indiana University Health, Kaiser Permanente, MultiCare Health System, North Memorial Health Care, Partners HealthCare, Providence Health & Services, Stanford Hospital & Clinics, Texas Children's Hospital, and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. Health Catalyst investors include CHV Capital (an Indiana University Health Company), HB Ventures, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Partners HealthCare, Sequoia Capital, and Sorenson Capital. Visit www.healthcatalyst.com, and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.