ProHealth First to Use Epic Data Warehouse for Physician Profiles

ProHealth Care announced today that it has become the first health care system to use Epic System Corp.’s Cogito data warehouse as a tool for population health management. ProHealth is using the data warehouse to converge data sources and create physician profiles, which allow physicians to easily see which of their patients are in need of important health screenings or care interventions.

"Our new physician-specific practice profiles represent a huge advance in our ability to both improve the care of individual patients and manage the health of the population we serve," said Kathy Scott, Ph.D., ProHealth Care’s chief innovation officer. The system provides profiles for more than 460 physicians in the ProHealth Solutions accountable care organization. ProHealth Solutions includes physicians employed by ProHealth Care as well as independent physicians.

Few ACOs and group practices are capable of producing individual, interactive reports of this type. The reports represent an important new tool for physicians as they track and manage the health of their patients."A typical primary care physician may have more than 2,500 patients, so without tools like this, it’s almost impossible to track each patient and know who is behind on care," explained Steve Kulick, MD, ProHealth Care’s chief medical officer. "The profiles allow us to easily identify patients who are in need of screenings or treatment."

The physician profiles are based on 54 clinical quality metrics such as cancer screenings, diabetic control and cholesterol screening. The metrics align with goals set by the Medicare Shared Savings Program, in which ProHealth Solutions is a participating provider, and with pay-for-performance targets established in ProHealth’s commercial health insurance contracts. For each metric there are threshold, target and stretch goals based on national quality benchmarks.

The new reports created with Epic’s data warehouse are presented to physicians as an online color-coded dashboard. If a physician is not meeting goals for a particular metric, clicking on the metric produces a list of patients who are in need of a screening, such as a mammogram, or other care interventions. The reports set the stage for enhancing preventive care and improving the management of chronic diseases.

"All patients will benefit from getting the right screenings and the right care at the right time," Dr. Kulick said, "and this will make a major difference for patients with complex medical conditions and chronic illnesses like asthma, diabetes and congestive heart failure." Through the reports, physicians also can see how their clinical management compares with the care provided by other physicians in their specialty. Initially the profiles will be updated quarterly, but eventually they will be produced monthly.

ProHealth Care’s Information Technology and Performance Excellence departments collaborated with Perficient Inc., an industry expert in business intelligence, to develop the physician profiles. The profiles combine clinical data in Epic’s data warehouse with data from other electronic medical record systems and Medicare claims data. "This is just the tip of the iceberg," said Christine Bessler, chief information officer for ProHealth Care. "Now that we have the data in a single location, we will be able to do more analysis than ever before and provide more timely answers to the questions physicians have about their patients."

Epic Systems, based in Verona, Wis., is the country’s

leading provider of electronic health record systems. Its software applications support doctors, nurses and other clinical professionals as they provide patient care, and also incorporate systems for medical registration, scheduling and billing. ProHealth Care began using the Epic system across its entire continuum of care in October 2011.

Epic’s Cogito data warehouse, a new product, allows health systems to combine patient care information from Epic with information from other electronic medical record systems and other data sources. ProHealth is using the data warehouse to pull together a wide variety of data including:

*Epic patient health data from ProHealth’s clinics, hospitals, home care and other services.*Patient health data from independent physician practices that use ProHealth’s Epic system.

*Clinical data from other electronic medical record systems used by area physician practices.

*Laboratory data.

*Financial data.

*Operational data.

*State and national quality benchmarks.

*Patient experience data.

*Insurance claims data.

ProHealth Care’s Business Intelligence Team has been invited to make a presentation about ProHealth’s use of Cogito at Epic’s Spring Advisory Council meetings, which bring together Epic clients from across the country.