Health Catalyst Launches Patient Safety Organization for Hospitals and Health Systems

New PSO offers confidential environment to assess safety concerns, reduce harm risk and improve safety culture free from threat of legal discovery

First PSO to incorporate industry-leading analytical technologies for computer-based active monitoring, clinician assessment, intervention, and a track record of successful outcomes' improvement

News provided by

Health Catalyst

Sep 11, 2018, 07:01 ET

SALT LAKE CITY, Sept. 11, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Health Catalyst today launched its federally-certified Health Catalyst Patient Safety Organization (HC PSO) that protects all-cause-harm patient safety data derived from the company's Patient Safety Monitor™ suite of software applications. Health Catalyst Patient safety experts will work closely with clients to collect, detect, intervene, learn, and prevent all-cause patient harm, all within the legal-protection of the HC PSO.

Tens of thousands of patients die every year in U.S. hospitals due to avoidable errors, according to numerous studies. The Journal of Patient Safety reports that avoidable non-lethal harm events affect up to 5 million patients per year. Yet fewer than 5 percent of adverse patient events are reported, making it difficult, if not impossible, to intervene in the events leading to harm. The threat of legal action can dissuade health systems from finding the root causes of patient harm and implementing prevention protocols.

In response to this dilemma, the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 establishes strong federal confidentiality and privilege protections for information that clinicians and provider organizations assemble and develop when conducting quality and safety deliberations and analysis within a PSO. Health Catalyst PSO is certified by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and listed as one of the nation's 82 PSOs: https://www.pso.ahrq.gov/listed. It provides a safe, confidential and collaborative environment for hospitals to assess threats to patient safety, reduce the risk of harm, advance a culture of safety, and improve care processes to reduce or eliminate harm, free from the threat of legal discovery.

"As a nurse, the Health Catalyst PSO is personally meaningful to me. My first professional responsibility is to patients' care and safety," said Holly Rimmasch, Health Catalyst Chief Clinical Officer. "Our PSO's principles are aligned with my professional duty, as is Health Catalyst's core patient safety and care quality mission. As a patient advocate, it is exciting to be a part of creating meaningful tools and services that can illuminate new improvement opportunities, prevent harm, and support the culture of safety journey."

Collaboration and Trusted Guidance
Health Catalyst is already widely known for delivering measurable and sustainable improvements across the patient safety spectrum. Examples documented in over 150 client case studies include 68 percent reduction in venous thromboembolisms (VTEs), 74 percent reduction in pressure ulcers (PUs) and $1.2 million saved in one year from decreased variable sepsis care cost.

HC PSO members can leverage that experience and learn best practices from other participating peer-organization members in an open, confidential environment. Collaboration is extended as organizations work with the HC PSO advisory team, which has more than 100-person-years of applied safety experience in organizations. Combined, the HC PSO will translate learnings from the nation's best patient safety evaluation systems into systematic, sustainable improvement in outcomes for patient populations.

Other HC PSO membership services include:

Semi-weekly reviews of patient safety data for trends, dissemination of learnings, and identification of improvement opportunities
Patient safety governance consultation from the HC PSO team for effective adoption and stewardship of patient safety work
Quarterly in-person and remote visits where the HC PSO team meets with the organization's leadership to consult on improving safety culture, best practices, and optimizing outcomes
Support for members' legal counsel on patient-specific data access subpoenas and PSO data grievance handling

Beginning in 2019, HC PSO member organizations will also participate in one of Health Catalyst's patient safety collaboratives, where they can share and learn with peer organizations across the country.

"Patient safety is a personal passion of mine, and a core mission of our company," said Health Catalyst CEO Dan Burton. "I've had many discussions with clients who have asked for PSO support. Offering these advisory services, fully integrated and aligned with our Patient Safety Monitor Suite, further solidifies the strong partnerships we have with clients to protect patient safety and improve patient outcomes."

Patient Safety and Data Analytics Expertise in One
Health Catalyst PSO is the only PSO to incorporate industry-leading analytical technologies for computer-based active monitoring, clinician assessment, intervention, and a track record of successful outcomes improvement. Timely insight and automated processes overcome several challenges common in manual patient safety event data capture and reporting. Based on data that is at least 30 days old, a manual approach requires extensive time and resources for data extraction, aggregation, and reporting, but still fails to facilitate whole-person patient safety and to predict all-cause harm.

Health Catalyst's Patient Safety Monitor™ Suite, including the new Surveillance Module, transforms the process. In near real-time, the module quickly identifies patterns of harm and provides viable options to eliminate patient safety risks and hazards for current and future patients. This potent combination of predictive analytics, text analytics and timely data from multiple sources enables the Patient Safety Monitor Suite to predict harm events and trigger a clinician response while the patient is still in the hospital.

Later this year, the Surveillance Module will leverage additional AI and machine learning capabilities to learn from patterns of harm, significantly improving its ability to propose strategies to eliminate patient safety risks and hazards for current and future patients. Membership in the HC PSO optimizes the value of this technology. In addition, data from the Patient Safety Monitor Suite as well as any other data reviewed is kept secure using Health Catalyst's state-of-the-art hardware, software, and handling facility. HC PSO segregates all PSWP to the latest server technology, using the strictest security protocols, in accordance with federal PSO regulations.

Health Catalyst is working with our client partners, as well as members in the PSO, to evolve the Patient Safety Monitor Suite with important upcoming features including Risk Prediction, Improvement Tracker, and Decision Support (Safety Consultant). The suite and each of its modules will be continuously enhanced based on emerging safety threats and new regulatory requirements.

"Patient safety improvement efforts are often hindered by antiquated, manual efforts or EHRs' technological and legal-discovery barriers," said Stanley Pestotnik, MS, RPh, Health Catalyst's vice president of patient safety products. "That's why it's so gratifying to see organizations better safeguard patients and supporting clinicians with our quantitative and AI-enabled near real-time data to help them identify and mitigate safety risks. This technology, combined with the best brains in the world on this topic in the Health Catalyst PSO, makes it an essential service for any healthcare delivery organization dedicated to patient safety."

To learn more about the HC PSO and Patient Safety Monitor Suite: Surveillance Module, schedule a demo, or download a datasheet, visit https://www.healthcatalyst.com/product/patient-safety-organization-pso.

About Health Catalyst
Health Catalyst is a next-generation data, analytics, and decision-support company, committed to being a catalyst for massive, sustained improvements in healthcare outcomes. We are the leaders in a new era of advanced predictive analytics for population health and value-based care with a suite of machine learning-driven solutions, decades of outcomes improvement expertise, and an unparalleled ability to unleash and integrate data from across the healthcare ecosystem. Our Health Catalyst Data Operating System (DOS™)—a next-generation data warehouse and application development platform powered by data from more than 100 million patients, and encompassing over 1 trillion facts—helps improve quality, add efficiency and lower costs for organizations ranging from the largest US health system to forward-thinking physician practices. Our technology and professional services can help you keep patients engaged and healthy in their homes, communities, and workplaces, and we can help you optimize care delivery to those patients when it becomes necessary. We are grateful to be recognized by Fortune, Gallup, Glassdoor, Modern Healthcare and a host of others as a Best Place to Work in technology and healthcare. Visit www.healthcatalyst.com and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Media Contact:
Todd Stein
Amendola Communications
510-417-0612
[email protected]

SOURCE Health Catalyst