Rush is third hospital in country to achieve 'pinnacle' of predictive analytics

Rush University Medical Center is just the third health care provider in the country to achieve the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s (HIMSS) Stage 7 for the Adoption Model for Analytics Maturity (AMAM). HIMSS, a health care information trade association, says the achievement “represents the pinnacle of applying analytics to support patient-specific prescriptive care.”

“Rush University Medical Center has dynamic analytics leadership. From the COO’s office live dashboard to front line care in the Road Home Program for vets, Rush showed how to deliver passionate, data-driven care,” said James E. Gaston, Senior Director, Healthcare Advisory Services Group, HIMSS analytics.

Health systems strive to improve care by identifying meaningful patterns in data – especially the genomic and biometric data used in personalized medicine. In 2016, HIMSS Analytics created its Adoption Model for Analytics Maturity to provide a framework and benchmarking system to help hospitals guide and measure these efforts. The eight-stage (0-7) model measures a continuum of efforts, from simply committing to a data analytics strategy through developing the infrastructure, processes, technology and leadership necessary to be able to convert data quickly into actionable information.

During a series of site visits, Rush information technology leaders, clinicians and administrators demonstrated the Medical Center’s ability to stream data in real time from many sources, process it, and provide analysis on an almost-real-time basis. The HIMSS evaluators, for example, reviewed an initiative aimed at substantially reducing the number of people who present at the Medical Center’s emergency department but leave without being seen (LWBS).

A hospital’s LWBS percentage often is considered a key indicator of overall efficiency, as well as having significant impact of revenue and patient satisfaction. Rush leadership felt their percentage was too high, set an aggressive goal of lowering it to only 1.4% of ED visitors leaving before receiving treatment, and assembled a multidisciplinary group of clinicians, executives and data scientists to address the issue.

By building predictive models that analyzed huge demographic and utilization data sets in real time, the team quickly was able to identify individuals at high risk for leaving the emergency department and customize workflows in near real time to intervene before those patients left. In the three months prior to the initiative, the Medical Center’s LWBS rate was 3.83 percent. After the predictive models shaped clinical workflows for the identified patients, the rate dropped to 1.25 percent.

“Data and information are the new liquid gold,” said Dr. Shafiq Rab, senior vice president and chief information officer, Rush University Medical Center and the Rush System. “At Rush, we are using tools like artificial intelligence and machine learning to mine that gold and use it to improve outcomes for our patients and our communities.”

The Stage 7 AMAM designation directly follows another notable HIMSS designation – also achieving Stage 7 for the HIMSS Analytics Outpatient Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model. This framework measures the degree to which electronic medical record technology is being used in outpatient settings. Accomplishing O-EMRAM Stage 7 demonstrates that Rush is maximizing the full potential of the EMR, especially by demonstrating continuous improvement of patient care at the population health level. The use of technology has been central to Rush’ efforts to address discrepancies in health equity.

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Rush was officially awarded both AMAM and O-EMRAM Stage 7 designation in December and will be publicly recognized during the Opening Keynote at the HIMSS19 conference on Tuesday, February 12 in Orlando, Florida.