eHealth Initiative Survey on Population Health Analytics: More Work to Do

An eHealth Initiative (eHI) survey offers new insight into population health management analytics, revealing critical areas for improvement. The eHealth Initiative's first-ever population survey of 65 health care providers shows progress in the nation's ability to collect and analyze health data, though results suggest EHRs are a missed opportunity thus far.

The eHI survey shows that despite widespread adoption of EHRs, only 17% of survey respondents integrate population health analytics into them.

"Hospital systems and doctors nationwide are investing heavily in EHRs, which are very good at documenting the health care an individual patient has received," states Jennifer Covich Bordenick, CEO of eHI. "But to move care to the next level and provide value-based care, we need better data to tackle the health of entire populations and change the way we deliver care on a larger scale."

eHI's survey was conducted in September and October of 2015 and included questions examining HIT infrastructure, population health management strategies and approach, patient engagement, data use and analytics, and care management. Additional results from the survey include the following:

• Analytics are most often shared with staff through physical reports (45%), scorecards (45%), and third-party Web-based tools (38%).

• Quality measurement and reporting (67%) was the most reported use of analytics, followed by performance comparisons across clinicians (43%), identification of gaps in care and preventive services (43%), and identifying outliers in cost and utilization (43%), among others.

• One-half of survey respondents (50%) indicated that analytics are retrospective while only one-fifth of respondents (20%) utilize real-time analytics.

• Key barriers associated with analytics include data integration/interoperability (54%), change management (42%), and competing HIT priorities (40%). Despite these challenges, respondents reported integrating patients in a variety of ways, including data collection and targeted interventions.

For more information, visit www.ehidc.org/articles/435-webinar-2015-population-health-survey-results.

Source: eHealth Initiative