New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute Selects ArborMetrix Platform to Identify Variation in Cost and Quality of Care

PENNINGTON, N.J. and ANN ARBOR, Mich., June 3, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute announced today that it has partnered with ArborMetrix, Inc., a leading provider of real-time healthcare analytics to identify and compare detailed information of both hospital cost and outcomes-based quality measurements.

The Quality Institute will use ArborMetrix's EpisodeMetrix™ analytics platform to compare data from New Jersey, Philadelphia and New York City. The initial procedures under consideration for measurement include joint replacement, spine surgery, bariatric surgery, coronary artery bypass surgery, and coronary angioplasty and stents. The Institute plans to include additional conditions and procedures as part of future phases.

As the first regional initiative of its kind to analyze data on this scale, the Quality Institute will enable providers to analyze and determine areas of improvement in variation in patient care delivery. Payers and employers will also gain a clearer picture of how care is delivered. The data will then be provided publicly to consumers who make the ultimate decision on their care selections.

"Consumers, purchasers, and other health care stakeholders across New Jersey look to the Quality Institute to help them make real and measurable improvements to our State's health care system," said Linda J. Schwimmer, Vice President for the Quality Institute. "ArborMetrix's platform will provide a thought-provoking, phased approach to a new health care performance measurement system that will reduce unnecessary variation and increase transparency in both cost and quality of care for the citizens of New Jersey. Our goal is to ultimately give health care providers, employers and consumers actionable information about the quality and cost of health care across the State. Armed with that information, they'll make better informed decisions and drive improvements in quality and cost containment."

Until now, Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) and other models to manage cost and quality for a population have only had limited ability to make decisions on both cost and quality together. The ArborMetrix platform is the first to provide clinical insights into data that help optimize specialty networks and referrals, reduce variation in acute care costs, manage full costs of episodes of care, monitor quality of specialty care, understand drivers of post-acute costs and succeed with bundled payments.

"As a large-scale purchaser of health care, it is critical that I get the best value in terms of quality and cost for my members," said George Laufenberg, Administrative Manager of the Northeast Regional Council of Carpenters and a member of the Quality Institute's Board of Directors. "We are hopeful that through this exciting new initiative, consumers will soon be able to get to a value equation in health care."

As part of this initiative, ArborMetrix is providing analytics to identify variations that will enable the Quality Institute to validate data at the hospital level to share among purchasers, employers, hospitals and consumers. The ArborMetrix analytics platform and quality reporting system will compare risk-adjusted outcomes and utilization for clinical conditions that are:

• Common
• Costly
• Associated with wide variations in prices
• Often performed on an elective basis

The ArborMetrix platform will integrate and analyze critical and comprehensive clinical, administrative, financial and claims data from several public and private sources, not only in New Jersey, but also from New York City and Philadelphia, in order to determine variation within cost and actual payments.

With the information provided by ArborMetrix as a starting point, the Quality Institute will be able to engage other stakeholders – including purchasers and provider groups – with the goal of integrating fuller data sets about prices, episode payments and quality measures in the future.

"With this program, the Quality Institute will have the platform necessary to evaluate opportunities to provide better patient care across the specialty and acute care setting," said Brett Furst, CEO of ArborMetrix. "These insights provide a comprehensive view of the variation in both cost and quality, enabling consumers and employers to manage their networks to achieve the highest quality of care at the lowest cost."

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About the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute

The New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute is a non-profit foundation founded in 1997. Its purpose is to undertake projects that will ensure that quality, accountability and cost containment are all closely linked to the delivery of health care services in New Jersey. The Quality Institute fosters collaboration amongst all stakeholders in the State's health care delivery system so that purchasers and health care consumers more fully realize the benefits of the linkage between quality, accountability and cost containment. The Quality Institute seeks to empower health care purchasers and consumers by publishing the results of objective research, comparative data on providers, and other pertinent educational information so that purchasers and consumers may adopt value-based purchasing practices and be able to make informed decisions on the merits of various health care programs, treatments and services. The Quality Institute was designated as the lead agency in New Jersey for the national Leapfrog Group effort in April 2002. For more information please visit www.njhcqi.org.

About ArborMetrix

ArborMetrix, Inc., located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, provides a unique, cloud-based platform for performance measurement and clinical intelligence in acute and specialty care. Based on its industry changing econometric research, ArborMetrix solutions deliver rigorous data analysis while incorporating advanced risk and reliability adjustments. With actionable insights grounded in clinical evidence, ArborMetrix clients quickly achieve quality improvements and cost savings. ArborMetrix was recently recognized by Frost and Sullivan with a 2014 Product Innovation Leadership Award for acute and specialty care. For more information, visit www.arbormetrix.com, email [email protected] or call 734-661-7949.

Media Contacts:

Amendola Communications for ArborMetrix
Jan Shulman, 480.664.8412 ext. 12
[email protected]

New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute
Linda Schwimmer, 609-303-0373
[email protected]

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SOURCE ArborMetrix

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