MultiCare Health System and Health Catalyst Expand Analytics Program, Target $25 Million in Annual Savings from Improved Outcomes

TACOMA, Wash. and SALT LAKE CITY, April 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- MultiCare Health System, one of Washington state's largest not-for-profit health systems, and Health Catalyst have deepened their relationship to enhance the quality and lower the cost of care across MultiCare's five hospitals and 130 total locations.

The new, substantially expanded relationship between the two organizations follows MultiCare's assessment that its use of Health Catalyst technologies and processes since 2010 has driven significant improvements in the health system's clinical, financial and operational outcomes. The new, deeper partnership includes four major elements: 

• MultiCare has signed an enterprise-wide technology subscription agreement, giving the health system access to Health Catalyst's entire library of technology solutions. 
• MultiCare has signed a significant professional services agreement, whereby a dedicated team of data architects, analysts and improvement experts will focus on the shared objective of $25 million of measurable improvements in outcomes per year. The dedicated team includes MultiCare employees who have become Health Catalyst team members, as well as additional Health Catalyst team members with relevant domain expertise.
• Health Catalyst has agreed to put a portion of the professional services contract "at risk," tied directly to the achievement of the annual $25 million improvement goal. 
• MultiCare has made a direct investment in Health Catalyst, as a participant in Health Catalyst's recently-closed Series E funding round.  

This long-term, shared-risk relationship structure follows a pattern Health Catalyst has utilized with other leading health systems such as Partners HealthCare and Allina Health. 

"This agreement with Health Catalyst is the culmination of a six-year partnership that started small but which has repeatedly proven its value and we believe will significantly accelerate improvements in quality and performance for MultiCare," said Florence Chang, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of MultiCare. "We have made significant progress with outcomes improvements over the last few years working with Health Catalyst, and we now believe we can take our efforts to the next level by deepening our investment in the right technology and expertise to achieve system-wide outcomes improvements."

Each year, an executive governance committee comprised of C-level executives from MultiCare and Health Catalyst will agree to a prioritized list of data-driven improvement projects with specific, measurable outcomes goals for each project. Then the dedicated team of data architects, analysts and improvement experts will focus their efforts on these projects. A portion of Health Catalyst's economic rewards will be directly tied to the attainment of these goals.

"We expect that this process of using analytics to prioritize projects, in combination with risk-sharing economics, will encourage far more focus and alignment than is found in traditional health system-vendor relationships," said Anna Loomis, Chief Financial Officer of MultiCare. 

Dan Burton, CEO of Health Catalyst, commented, "Our experience with MultiCare as a customer and now as an investor has been uniformly positive and we're excited about this significant expansion of our relationship. Our shared experience has taught us both that transforming healthcare requires more than great software – you must combine technology with exceptional people with the experience and know-how to improve outcomes. This long-term relationship brings those elements together, including a stellar team of data architects, process improvement experts and clinicians who we are honored to work with as teammates at Health Catalyst."

Pneumonia Breakthrough Highlights Partnership Value

While MultiCare has utilized Health Catalyst since 2010, several recent successes highlighted the effectiveness of this approach and its potential for greater impact if expanded. In particular, in February 2014 MultiCare launched a multi-disciplinary pneumonia workgroup tasked with improving care and outcomes for patients. Using Health Catalyst's pneumonia application on top of the Health Catalyst Late-Binding™ Data Warehouse, combined with a team of clinical and analytics experts using this application and data, the team monitors high-level outcome measures to correlate improved processes with outcomes.

These data and trends enable the team to determine which clinical improvements are related to which specific interventions—for instance, whether development of a new pneumonia EHR order set and its adoption by providers correlates to a reduction in readmissions for pneumonia patients. The team can also monitor the cost impact of interventions across multiple care locations.

Empowered by analytics, the pneumonia workgroup delivered significant outcome improvements within one year of its deployment:

• 16 percent reduction in the pneumonia mortality rate (compared to a 1.7% improvement in pneumonia mortality within the National Top Quartile of U.S. hospitals, according to Premier Data available from 47 states)
• 24 percent reduction in pneumonia readmissions (compared to a 2 percent reduction in pneumonia readmissions for the National Top Quartile of U.S. hospitals)
• 2 percent decrease in length-of-stay for pneumonia patients

"We have experienced success partnering with Health Catalyst to bring the right technology and expertise to bear to actually improve outcomes, as evidenced by our work to improve outcomes for our pneumonia patients," said Christopher Kodama, MD, President of MultiCare Connected Care, MultiCare's accountable care organization. "We believe that our expanded and deepened relationship will enable us to significantly accelerate the breadth and depth of these kinds of outcomes improvement projects, which will directly benefit patients and strengthen MultiCare Health." 

About MultiCare Health System

MultiCare Health System is a not-for-profit health care organization with more than 10,000 employees and a comprehensive network including Allenmore Hospital, Auburn Medical Center, Good Samaritan Hospital, Mary Bridge Children's Hospital, Tacoma General Hospital, MultiCare Medical Associates, affiliated physicians, as well as numerous primary care, specialty and urgent care clinics and community outreach services.

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 65 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.

For more information contact:

Todd Stein
Amendola Communications for Health Catalyst
916-346-4213
[email protected]

Marce Edwards
MultiCare Health System
253-403-1716
[email protected]

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SOURCE Health Catalyst

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