Partners HealthCare, Health Catalyst Announce Strategic Collaboration To Improve Patient Care

Creates New Center of Excellence in Population Health to Share Best Practices, Improve Patient Care

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Sep 10, 2015, 08:00 ET

BOSTON and SALT LAKE CITY, Sept. 10, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Partners HealthCare, founded by Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, and Health Catalyst have established a strategic collaboration aimed at fostering and accelerating the adoption of population health management (PHM) strategies and practices nationally to improve the quality of healthcare and lowering costs while meeting the needs of patients, providers and payors. The $30 million initiative will enable the development and testing of innovative PHM strategies at Partners and, in collaboration with Health Catalyst, facilitate the transfer of the knowledge generated to other healthcare providers.

Partners HealthCare is an integrated health system founded by Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. In addition to its two academic medical centers, the Partners system includes community and specialty hospitals, a managed care organization, community health centers, a physician network, home health and long-term care services, and other health care entities. Partners is a principal teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School.

"This agreement with Health Catalyst and our new Center for Population Health will accelerate our care management program and improve outcomes for Partners HealthCare patients, as well as provide the infrastructure and knowledge base for broader outcomes transformation both here and across the country," said Timothy G. Ferris, MD, Senior Vice President of Population Health Management for Partners HealthCare, who will lead the new Center of Population Health. "We have made significant progress with population health and care management over the past decade, including using Health Catalyst technology and services over the past few years, and we now believe we can take our efforts to the next level by further leveraging the experience and know-how of both organizations."

"Our experience with Partners HealthCare as a customer, as an investor and as a development partner has been uniformly positive and we're excited about this significant expansion of our relationship on all three fronts," said Dan Burton, CEO of Health Catalyst. "The formation of the Center for Population Health is deeply consistent with our shared experience that transforming healthcare requires more than great software – you must combine technology with exceptional people with the experience and know-how to improve outcomes. Partners HealthCare has built a care management program filled with pragmatic innovations that have produced industry-leading measurable results over an extended performance period. Taken together, the new Center of Population Health and the intellectual property that we're acquiring will enable Health Catalyst to further improve care management and population health outcomes, not only for Partners HealthCare but for health systems across the country."

The new, expanded agreement between Partners HealthCare and Health Catalyst includes four major elements:

Health Catalyst and Partners HealthCare will collaborate through the creation of a new Partners HealthCare Center for Population Health. The Center will train Health Catalyst and Partners HealthCare clinical and administrative teams in best practices for care management and population health, building on the knowledge base that enabled Partners HealthCare to save $40 million in providing care to the seniors as part of the federal government's Pioneer accountable care organization from 2012 to 2014. Health Catalyst graduates of the program will disseminate these best practices to client healthcare organizations across the country.
Health Catalyst is licensing technology, content and analytics innovations that Partners HealthCare, the Massachusetts General Physician Organization and the Brigham and Women's Physician Organization developed as part of its decade-long, nationally-recognized care management and population health management programs. Health Catalyst intends to commercialize these innovations to further enhance Partners HealthCare's population health and care management programs, and to benefit other health systems in their care management and population health initiatives.
Partners HealthCare has signed an expanded enterprise-wide technology subscription agreement, giving it access to Health Catalyst's full suite of technology solutions to accelerate outcomes improvement. In keeping with Health Catalyst's mission to improve outcomes, a portion of the company's revenue from the subscription will be tied to the attainment of measurable improvements in Partners HealthCare's clinical and financial performance.
Partners HealthCare is increasing its equity ownership stake in Health Catalyst, after first investing in the company in 2013.

Partners HealthCare is an integrated health system founded by Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. In addition to its two academic medical centers, the Partners system includes community and specialty hospitals, a managed care organization, community health centers, a physician network, home health and long-term care services, and other healthcare entities. Partners HealthCare is committed to patient care, research, teaching, and service to the community. Partners is one of the nation's leading biomedical research organizations and a principal teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. Partners HealthCare is a non-profit organization.

About Health Catalyst
Health Catalyst is a mission-driven data warehousing, analytics and outcomes-improvement company that helps healthcare organizations of all sizes perform the clinical, financial, and operational reporting and analysis needed for population health and accountable care. Our proven enterprise data warehouse (EDW) and analytics platform helps improve quality, add efficiency and lower costs in support of more than 50 million patients for organizations ranging from the largest US health system to forward-thinking physician practices. For more information, visit https://www.healthcatalyst.com, and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.