MHA Keystone Center Expands Relationship with ArborMetrix to Benchmark Readmission Performance

ANN ARBOR, Mich., May 12, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- ArborMetrix, Inc., a leading provider of real-time healthcare analytics, and the Michigan Health & Hospital Association (MHA) Keystone Center today announced that the MHA Keystone Center will deploy ArborMetrix's Readmetrix solution statewide to more than 100 organizations within its hospital membership.

The goal of the initiative is to address the challenges of value-based payment mandates, particularly readmission penalties, through data and analytics to better manage the quality of specialty care delivered in acute care settings.

Readmetrix is an advanced, web-based analytics tool that will leverage all-payer data from the MHA's Michigan Inpatient Database (MIDB) to analyze readmission rates across different hospitals in the state and benchmark condition-specific quality measures for dozens of the most important acute care surgical procedures and medical treatments. With access to MHA data through Readmetrix, member hospitals can compare their readmissions rates and other quality metrics to those of peer hospitals across the state, and identify opportunities for improvement.

"Reducing variation and isolating risk starts with empowering care providers with reliable tools that can deliver performance data in context to the broader care community," said Sam R. Watson, MHA senior vice president, patient safety and quality. "By offering our members easier access into critical insights about care episodes, together we can identify patterns that will help guide future intervention within specialties and with specific patients. This will help mitigate inappropriate readmissions and also improve patient care."  

Reducing hospital readmissions is one of many initiatives the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has launched to help improve the quality of healthcare in the United States while reducing costs. As hospitals grapple with unprecedented margin pressures and reduction in Medicare reimbursement as a result of the Affordable Care Act, CMS is penalizing a record number of hospitals – 2,610 – and increasing the maximum penalty as part of its Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program. During this, the third year of the program, hospitals can lose as much as three percent of their Medicare payments, and must manage to an expanded number of conditions the government evaluates.

"The market demand for clinical performance measurement solutions is growing in response to these value-based care mandates," said Brett Furst, CEO of ArborMetrix. "MHA member hospitals will now have additional evidence-based insights and actionable clinical intelligence to improve their position under the new reimbursement paradigm."

The new Readmetrix agreement builds upon MHA Keystone Center's relationship with ArborMetrix for performance measurement analytics. Last spring, the center adopted the ArborMetrix RegistryMetrix™ solution to measure clinical performance in obstetrics to help reduce obstetrical adverse advents and improve patient safety.

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About Michigan Health & Hospital Association
Based in greater Lansing, the MHA advocates in Michigan and Washington, DC, on behalf of healthcare providers and the communities and patients they serve. The MHA is a nationally recognized leader on initiatives that protect and promote quality, cost-effective and accessible healthcare. To learn more, visit http://www.mha.org. The MHA Keystone Center is a nonprofit organization that brings patient safety experts and hospitals together to work in collaborative programs to improve patient safety and healthcare quality and to reduce medical errors. To date, the center has been funded by MHA-member hospitals, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Michigan Department of Community Health. For more information, visit http://www.mhakeystonecenter.org.

About ArborMetrix
ArborMetrix, Inc., located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, provides a private, 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. For more information, visit www.arbormetrix.com, email [email protected] or call 734-661-7949.

Media Contacts:
Amendola Communications for ArborMetrix
Tim Boivin, 224-209-6495
[email protected]

Michigan Health & Hospital Association
Laura Wotruba, 517.703.8601
[email protected]

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SOURCE ArborMetrix

Related Links

http://www.arbormetrix.com