HIMSS16 Conference Recap Day 4 – Show Wraps Up

by | Mar 4, 2016 | Healthcare

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HIMSS16 logoYesterday was Day 4 of the HIMSS16 conference – it was the last day that the exhibition floor was open, and with the exception of some last education sessions and keynotes today (Dr. Jonah Berger and Peyton Manning), it’s time to call this show a wrap!

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I was able to attend a couple more education sessions yesterday on some interesting topics – data governance and healthcare innovation. Here are a few highlights from each…

Evolution of Data Governance in Healthcare

This session, presented by Donald Levick and Lori Yackanicz of Lehigh Valley Health Network, focused on how Lehigh Valley – a 5 hospital system with 1,300 beds in Pennsylvania – implemented a data governance program to ensure that it provided a “single source of truth” to decision makers.

Levick and Yackanicz talked about the problem with a lack of data governance – mainly that data might be correct in their individual silos, but was not consistent at an enterprise level. In addition, users were “data shopping” or looking for data that would meet their individual needs.

Once Lehigh Valley decided that it needed data governance, it had to figure out:

  • Which metrics are most critical?
  • Which data is the actual source of the truth?
  • Who owns the data?

Knowing that it couldn’t accomplish everything at once, the organization decided to focus on certain quality, operational, and financial metrics, and created standard data definitions for the top 10 metrics. One example that Lehigh Valley discussed in particular was average length of stay. Different departments had different definitions based on what they wanted to report, so the hospital had to pick one that it would go by.

Based on this presentation, the questions posed by attendees, and the work that we do with our customers, it’s clear that data governance is a real challenge for many hospitals and health systems, and tackling that challenge will be front and center in the near future.

Establishing a Health IT Innovation Program

The second session I attended yesterday was on establishing a health IT innovation program. It was presented by Brian Jacobs and David Pierre of Children’s National Health System, based in Washington, DC. Jacobs and Pierre discussed how their institution developed an innovation center that would help drive improvements in:

  • Clinician experience
  • Safety and clinical quality
  • mHealth
  • Population health

Children’s National’s innovation center is located in the heart of the main hospital so that clinicians and researchers can easily access it. The hospital uses an innovation process that focuses on a “stage gate” methodology in which success is defined for each gate and needs to be met before moving forward.

The presenters spoke in particular about a dashboard they created in the Cardiac ICU. This dashboard is visible to everyone – clinicians and parents. It brings in EHR data and helps clinicians quickly see what tests, medications, etc. need to be given to each patient. The outcomes following implementation of the dashboard have been phenomenal:

  • Decrease in catheter-associated urinary tract infections – 30%
  • Catheters in place for too long – down 11%
  • Medication reconciliation – down 80% – 93%
  • In ICU, time to consent – down 49%

Dimensional Insight at HIMSS16

Today we are breaking down our booth and heading home following a very successful show! We are already looking forward to HIMSS17, which will be held Feb. 19-23, 2017 in Orlando, Florida.

Ready for a test drive of our healthcare analytics software?

Kathy Sucich
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