Can Technology Help Manage Population Health? Free Webinar Demonstrates Applications and Their Use

SALT LAKE CITY, April 8, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Health Catalyst will present a free webinar Wednesday, April 9^th to demonstrate the analytics applications helpful for successful population health management, including a case study of a large academic medical center that reduced heart failure readmissions by 20 percent.

The webinar, which is open to all healthcare executives, nurse leaders, administrators, information technologists and clinicians, is titled "The Path to Shared Savings with Population Health Management Applications."

The live one-hour webinar begins at 1 p.m. Eastern Time and will include a question and answer period. Please register through this link.

Webinar presenters Eric Just, vice president of technology for Health Catalyst, and Kathleen Merkley, RN, the company's vice president of client engagement, have decades of combined experience designing and implementing information technologies to improve care and lower costs.  In this webinar, Just and Merkley will demonstrate several products that support a shift toward shared savings, beginning with an application focused on finding the areas of greatest opportunity for cost reduction. Next, Just will demonstrate the Health Catalyst tools used to define and monitor populations and cohorts across the continuum of care. Finally, Merkley will detail the experience of a large academic health system that is succeeding in improving the quality of patient lives as well as reducing costs by lowering heart failure readmissions.

Heart failure is a growing public health issue with 25 percent of hospitalized patients returning within 30 days of discharge. Not only is heart failure associated with high morbidity and mortality, it also accounts for $38 billion of healthcare spent annually in the United States. Government and commercial payers are increasingly focusing on 30-day readmission rates as a quality and economic measurement for hospitals.

In this webinar, attendees will learn:

• How to identify variability in care
• How to define accurate populations
• How to report on key health indicators across the continuum of care
• How to apply flexible models for risk stratification
• How to measure detailed process metrics spanning transitions of care for HF patients

Before joining Health Catalyst in 2011, Eric Just spent the previous decade in biomedical informatics including a management role overseeing the research arm of the Northwestern Medical Data Warehouse at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. While there, Just also served as a senior data architect helping to create the data warehouse technical foundation in addition to leading genome database efforts. Just holds an MS in chemistry from Northwestern University and a BS in chemistry from the College of William and Mary.

Merkley previously worked for Intermountain Healthcare as the corporate clinical IT implementation manager. She is a registered nurse/nurse practitioner and received her doctorate degree in nursing practice from the University of Utah.

Click to Tweet: 4/9 Free Webinar: #PopulationHealth #Healthanalytics improve #qualityofcare, enhance #AccountableCare. http://bit.ly/1gFm4on

About Health Catalyst

Based in Salt Lake City, Health Catalyst delivers a proven, Late-Binding™ Data Warehouse platform and analytic applications that actually work in today's transforming healthcare environment. Health Catalyst data warehouse platforms aggregate data utilized in population health and ACO projects in support of over 30 million unique patients.  Health Catalyst platform clients operate over 135 hospitals and 1,700 clinics that account for over $130 billion in care delivered annually. Health Catalyst maintains a current KLAS customer satisfaction score of 90/100, received the highest vendor rating in Chilmark's 2013 Clinical Analytics Market Trends Report, and was selected as a 2013 Gartner Cool Vendor. Health Catalyst was also recognized in 2013 as one of the best places to work by both Modern Healthcare magazine and Utah Business magazine.   Health Catalyst's platform and applications are being utilized at leading health systems including Allina Health, Crystal Run Healthcare, Indiana University Health, Kaiser Permanente, MultiCare Health System, North Memorial Health Care, Partners HealthCare, Providence Health & Services, Stanford Hospital & Clinics, Texas Children's Hospital, and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. Health Catalyst investors include CHV Capital (an Indiana University Health Company), HB Ventures, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Partners HealthCare, Sequoia Capital, and Sorenson Capital. Visit www.healthcatalyst.com, and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

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SOURCE Health Catalyst