UHC Collaborates with Carefx to Provide Comparative Performance Analytics Tools to Nation's Leading Academic Medical Centers and Affiliates

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. and OAK BROOK, Ill., Aug. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Carefx Corp., a leading provider of interoperable workflow solutions, announced today that it is collaborating with the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC), an alliance of academic medical centers representing approximately 90% of the nation's nonprofit academic medical centers, to provide advanced business intelligence (BI) dashboards, and analytical tools.  These tools will enhance UHC's Clinical Data Base (CDB), a robust, transparent, patient-level tool with comparative performance data.

The Carefx BI dashboards were developed by a team of medical, operational and finance leaders at Cleveland Clinic and are used throughout this UHC-member organization to enhance clinical and operational performance.

"We are seeing a tremendous amount of interest in the BI dashboard technology," said Andrew Hurd, Chairman and CEO of Carefx.  "Driven by the reporting requirements for HITECH Act, meaningful use, and by the general trend toward benchmarking and accountability embodied by the Accountable Care Organizations movement, the need is acute for solid benchmarking data and performance management tools.  

"Accountable Care represents an important change in the way in which healthcare is delivered and reimbursed.  It requires more transparency, currency and accuracy in the quality metrics that are collected, measured and analyzed," said Barry Runyon, Research Vice President for Healthcare Providers at Gartner, Inc.  "Business intelligence dashboards and analytical tools will be a requirement for healthcare delivery organizations to ensure high levels of clinical and operational performance and to continually improve. Healthcare delivery organizations could be at risk if costs are greater or if the quality of care delivered is lower than expected."

UHC Performance Measurement

As part of its mission to help members achieve clinical and operational excellence, UHC provides transparent, comparative performance data and business intelligence to its member organizations.  Recently, the organization identified its comparative data and analytical tools as an area where it could provide additional value to its members, and turned to Carefx to take advantage of the company's BI dashboard technology which is based upon Cleveland Clinic BI solutions.

This dashboard technology supports Carefx's mission of advancing health care by providing rapid, streamlined access to data to facilitate more informed clinical and operational decision-making.

The first in the series of dashboards being made available to UHC members is the Physician Profiler Plus dashboard that allows physicians to drill-down to detailed comparisons and case-level data to measure their performance on Length of Stay (LOS), Hospital Cost, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) indicators, Readmission Rate and Mortality.  The dashboard also provides Chief Medical Officers the ability to identify variation in physician performance to improve quality and utilization which satisfies physician oversight mandates under Ongoing Professional Practice Evaluation (OPPE).

"Our member organizations rely daily on the CDB for insights that can't be provided by other databases. With the overlay of the Physician Profiler Plus dashboard from Carefx, users will be able to access and analyze important provider information with a greater level of customization.  This tool will give quick insight into who is the admitting, treating, consulting and discharging physician per patient encounter and be able to compare valuable elements with both internal and external cohorts," said Steve Meurer, PhD, MHA, MBA, senior vice president, UHC Comparative Data & Informatics.  

Carefx and Cleveland Clinic

Carefx recently announced collaboration with Cleveland Clinic to market and further develop the BI dashboard technology used by the Clinic and brought to market by IntellisEPM, a start up of Cleveland Clinic Innovations.  The dashboards are used to drive performance through enhanced decision making by providing views of data relevant to the clinical or executive user.  The dashboards leverage a BI technology platform to help accelerate performance improvement across the health system, including financial performance, workforce management, quality and patient experience.

"There are few contemporary tools available to hospital management that have as great a potential for impact as business intelligence dashboards," said Chris Coburn, Executive Director of Cleveland Clinic Innovations, the Clinic's corporate venturing arm. "These dashboards were developed by teams of Cleveland Clinic medical, operational and finance leaders to comprehensively drive performance throughout our institution."

About UHC

The University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC), formed in 1984, is an alliance of 107 academic medical centers and 233 of their affiliated hospitals, representing approximately 90% of the nation's nonprofit academic medical centers. UHC offers its members specific programs and services to improve clinical, operational, financial, and patient safety performance. The mission of UHC is to advance knowledge, foster collaboration, and promote change to help members succeed in their respective markets. For more information, visit www.uhc.edu.

About Carefx Corporation

Carefx supports healthcare organizations in achieving their vision of advancing the quality and safety of patient care delivery through its Fusionfx suite of interoperable workflow solutions. Fusionfx streamlines and simplifies clinical and business workflow and connects care providers to the information they need - where, when, and how they need it. By managing care transitions and information gaps between diverse systems, departments and facilities, Fusionfx delivers crucial patient information with speed, efficiency and logic. Carefx supports more than 700 hospitals, health systems, regional health information organizations (RHIOs) and health information exchanges (HIEs) across North America and Europe.

For more information on:

• UHC and the Carefx offerings, visit www.uhc.edu
• Carefx Business Intelligence Dashboards, visit: www.carefx.com/businessintelligence
• Carefx, visit www.carefx.com
• Contact Carefx at (480) 833-5010 or email at [email protected]

SOURCE Carefx Corp.