Health systems looking to improve the lives of patients through analytics often face problems that prevent them from making the improvements they desire. But by using the three systems: Analytics, Content, and Deployment, organizations can be successful. The analytics system ensures that data is aggregated, easy-to-access, and distributed efficiently by implementing a data warehouse. The content system provides the framework for best practices and baselines, which provide context and actionable insight to metrics provided by the analytics system. Finally, the deployment system consists of a permanent, multi-disciplinary team to enact those actionable insights from the content system. All three systems together form the base for organizations to make the journey to data-driven improvement successful.

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Healthcare Data Analysts
Healthcare data analysts
share one common ideal—
a strong desire to use
analytics to improve the
lives of patients, rather
than just churn out metrics
used to punish staff who
underperform.
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Healthcare Data Analysts
Three Core Problems Facing Data Analysts
Analysts spend too much time gathering
data and producing reports and not
enough time analyzing data.
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1
Despite reports and dashboards, data
still doesn’t seem relevant – reports and
dashboards are not actionable.
2
Improvements can be made, but the
organization can’t sustain them. Prior
wins disappear as new projects arrive.
3

4. An analytics system ensures
data is aggregated, easy-to-access,
efficiently.
A technologist works with
organizations to create a solid
analytics infrastructure that
incorporates an enterprise
data warehouse (EDW) and
powerful analytics applications.
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Analytics-Driven Healthcare
and distributed
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5. For technology to drive real
clinical and financial
transformation, we have to
closely partner with other
areas of the business in order
to address the second two
challenges—actionable
dashboards and sustainable
improvement.
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Analytics-Driven Healthcare
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6. Challenge of Building an Effective Healthcare
Content System: Actionable Data
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Have you ever heard the following?
We have many reports and
dashboards, but our data does not
seem relevant and is not actionable.”
If your system is displaying data not
relevant or actionable for improving
patients’ lives, your efforts to improve
care with analytics will fail.
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7. Challenge of Building an Effective Healthcare
Content System: Actionable Data
Example: Actionable Heart
Failure Readmissions Data
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Suppose a heart failure
readmission rate dashboard
shows a flat number with no
further data as context.
There’s nothing actionable
about that information.
The information is insufficient
to drive change even if the
numbers are accurate.
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8. Challenge of Building an Effective Healthcare
Content System: Actionable Data
Example: Actionable Heart
Failure Readmissions Data
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How do you know where to
focus to lower heart failure
readmissions?
By analyzing the evidence
data to identify actions proven
to reduce readmissions.
Then, you must measure how
well your organization
performs in implementing and
controlling those processes.
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9. Challenge of Building an Effective Healthcare
Content System: Actionable Data
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Ask yourself this question:
What practices are really going to affect
the outcome that we want to change?”
Then identify the relevant best
practices. Incorporating this
evidence-based knowledge
into your analytics is what we
at Health Catalyst call a
content system.
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10. A content system involves
applying evidence-based best
practices to care delivery.
By systematically incorporating
content into your improvement
program, you can be sure that
your interventions focus on
what’s actionable and relevant.
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Healthcare Content System
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11. A good analogy is predicting
the weather. Consider that we
no longer refer to the “Farmer’s
Almanac” for our source of
weather planning information.
Science and technology has
pushed aside the almanac
because measureable data
analytics beats the mystics and
folklore of days past.
The same should apply to
healthcare.
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Healthcare Content System
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12. If you’re setting out to improve
heart failure readmissions, a
good analytics partner will
already have these pieces of
the content system in place:
Evidence-based definitions of the
target population
Best practices for reducing heart
failure readmissions
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Evidence-based Medicine
Don’t Do All the Groundwork Yourself
Process metrics for these
practices that must be tracked
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13. The Healthcare Deployment System:
Engaging People to Drive Sustainable Improvement
The deployment system is
the people portion of any
analytics endeavor. It is how
content-driven analytics are
translated into care
improvement and how it
scales across an organization.
It involves working with
stakeholders throughout the
enterprise to establish
organizational structures that
drive sustainable change.
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14. The Healthcare Deployment System:
Pillars of an Effective Deployment System
PILLAR ONE
Permanent, Dedicated Teams
Permanent workgroups tackle
a specific clinical area, such as
C-sections or heart failure.
Typically consists of a
physician, a nurse, various
operational roles, and technical
staff. They should be cross-functional—
operational personnel working
with technical staff.
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clinical and
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15. The Healthcare Deployment System:
Pillars of an Effective Deployment System
The workgroup determines
how to implement
improvement. This effort is
based on data analysis by
the technical staff and
applies the clinical and
scientific knowledge of the
rest of the team.
The team builds the first
aim statement around best
practice for improving a
specific data point such as
C-section—length of stay.
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PILLAR ONE
Permanent, Dedicated Teams
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16. The Healthcare Deployment System:
Pillars of an Effective Deployment System
Workgroups must be
permanent and integrated
If the team is disbanded
once you start seeing gains
in improvement, you won’t
sustain those gains.
Clinical people without
access to solid data driving
their decisions or technical
people without clinical
guidance, will not achieve
sustainable improvement.
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PILLAR ONE
Permanent, Dedicated Teams
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17. The Healthcare Deployment System:
Pillars of an Effective Deployment System
Workgroups must have
resource governance.
Governance to Prioritize Resources
Leadership should take an
active role in determining
priorities when developing
metrics.
A guidance team overseeing
workgroups evaluates
resources and readiness to
uncover areas most likely to
benefit from improvement.
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PILLAR TWO
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18. The Healthcare Deployment System:
Pillars of an Effective Deployment System
Effective deployment
systems apply Agile
principles to care
improvement.
In a workgroup using Agile
methodology, the physician,
the nurse and the technolo-gist
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work together to find the
best way to use data to drive
improvement.
PILLAR THREE
Agile Development Methodology
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Three Systems for Analytics Success
in a Healthcare Organization
Content
System
Deployment
System
Analytics
System
Clinical Best Practices
Content System
• Evidence gathering and
evaluating knowledge
assets (e.g. Order sets)
• Starter set value stream
maps
• Patient safety protocols
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Organizational
Deployment System
• Team structures
• Roles
• Fingerprinting system-wide
implementation
Data Warehouse & Analytics
Analytics System
• Data driven prioritization
• Calculations
• Definitions
• Enterprise data warehouse
• Data visualization

20. Link to original article for a more in-depth discussion.
The Three Systems Critical to Healthcare Analytics Success
Building a Successful Analytics Strategy (a free, on-demand webinar, transcript, and slides)
Eric Just, Vice President, Technology and Mike Doyle, Vice President
© 2014 Health Catalyst
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More about this topic
The Best Approach to Healthcare Analytics
Tom Burton, Co-founder, Senior Vice President, Product Development
The Best Organizational Structure for Healthcare Analytics
John Wadsworth, Vice President, Technical Operation
Quality Improvement in Healthcare: Where is the Best Place to Start?
Eric Just, Vice President, Technology
Creating Effective Healthcare Dashboards
A Success Story from a large medical center
Using Metrics the Right Way
Kathleen Merkley, DNP, APRN, Vice President
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21. – John Haughom, MD, Senior Advisor, Health Catalyst
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For more information:
Download Healthcare: A Better Way.
The New Era of Opportunity
“This is a knowledge source for clinical and
operational leaders, as well as front-line
caregivers, who are involved in improving
processes, reducing harm, designing and
implementing new care delivery models, and
undertaking the difficult task of leading
meaningful change on behalf of the patients
they serve.”
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22. Other Clinical Quality Improvement Resources
Eric Just joined the Health Catalyst family in August of 2011 as Vice President of
Technology, bringing over 10 years of biomedical informatics experience. Prior to
Catalyst, he managed the research arm of the Northwestern Medical Data Warehouse
at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. In this role, he led the
development of technology, processes, and teams to leverage the clinical data
warehouse. Previously, as a senior data architect, he helped create the data
warehouse technical foundation and innovated new ways to extract and load medical data. In
addition, he led the development effort for a genome database. Eric holds a Master of Science in
Chemistry from Northwestern University and a Bachelors of Science in Chemistry from the College
of William and Mary.
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Click to read additional information at www.healthcatalyst.com
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