Sessions

6 – How We Developed an Advanced Analytics Team to Solve Our Strategic Problems (strategy, analyst)

David M. Wild, MD - Vice President of Lean Promotion, University of Kansas Health System

David M. Wild, MD

Vice President of Lean Promotion, University of Kansas Health System

Dr. David Wild serves as the Vice President of Lean Promotion at the University of Kansas Health System, based in Kansas City, Kansas. In this role, he has responsibility for process, performance, and quality improvement work, the development and deployment of the System’s improvement and management systems, applied analytics, clinical variation reduction programs, and clinical and operational redesign across the inpatient and ambulatory enterprises. Dr. Wild is also a practicing anesthesiologist and Faculty in the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Dr. Wild completed his undergraduate and M.D. degrees at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and his residency training in Anesthesiology at Saint Louis University where he served in multiple operational and leadership roles prior to joining the University of Kansas Health System. He has served as the President of the Kansas Society of Anesthesiologists and is active at the national level in the development of new delivery and alternative payment models for perioperative care.

It’s all about the data. The ability to quickly and effectively assemble timely, accurate, and comprehensive data for strategic decision making and operational execution is an imperative in our era of: increasing at-risk payment models, reduced reimbursements, costs pressures, consumer demands, and evolving healthcare technologies like predictive analytics and precision medicine. The University of Kansas Health System’s advanced analytics team will discuss how it partners with its users to quickly develop insights, predictions, and interventions to solve strategic problems: generating new revenue, improving operational efficiencies, and delivering safe, quality care.

7 – Using Machine Learning and Big Data to Drive Patient Engagement and Better Health Outcomes (analyst, AI)

Christer A. Johnson - Principal, EY Analytics

Christer A. Johnson

Principal, EY Analytics

Christer Johnson leads EY’s Analytics Advisory services for the Healthcare Sector in the Americas. Christer brings 24 years of experience leveraging advanced analytics, machine learning, and big data techniques to help his clients improve the efficiency and effectiveness of business decisions and processes across many industries such as government, transportation, consumer packaged goods, healthcare, insurance, life sciences, and telecommunications. Christer joined E&Y in 2013 after a 19-year career at IBM. From 2008 to 2012 he led leading Advanced Analytics Consulting Services across North America, where he leveraged descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics to report, identify, and capture operational cost saving and/or revenue enhancing opportunities for clients.

Alexander (Alex) Marano - Customer Analytics Lead, Cigna Information Management & Analytics

Alexander (Alex) Marano

Customer Analytics Lead, Cigna Information Management & Analytics

For many years, companies in the retail, telecom, insurance, and banking industries have used machine learning (ML) techniques to analyze terabytes of real-time data representing a wide range of customer interactions (across all channels), demographic characteristics, and lifestyle events. This session will explain how CIGNA has leveraged some of the ML techniques used to influence consumer behavior in other industries for their own purpose of influencing consumer behaviors towards lower medical costs and better healthcare outcomes. One example to be discussed is how they used a combination of claims, demographic, lab, call center, and click-stream data from web-interactions and mobile phone interactions to improve the timing, channel, and content they use to engage members with chronic conditions in coaching that lowers medical costs and improves healthcare outcomes for those patients.

8 – Real-World Examples Leveraging NLP, Big Data, and Data Science to Improve Population Health and Individual Care Outcomes (AI, technical)

Shaun J. Grannis, MD, MS, FAAFP, FACMI - Director, Regenstrief Center for Biomedical Informatics, Associate Professor of Family Medicine, Indiana University School of Medicine

Shaun J. Grannis, MD, MS, FAAFP, FACMI

Director, Regenstrief Center for Biomedical Informatics, Associate Professor of Family Medicine, Indiana University School of Medicine

Dr. Shaun Grannis, MD, MS, FFAFP, FACMI, is Director of the Regenstrief Center for Biomedical Informatics and Associate Professor of Family Medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine. He co-leads the Informatics pillar for Indiana University’s Precision Health Initiative and collaborates closely with national and international health stakeholders to advance technical infrastructure and data-sharing capabilities. His research focuses on developing, testing, and implementing novel patient matching approaches and other data integration, NLP, and machine learning strategies to improve discovery, decision support, and health outcomes in a variety of contexts.

With the unrelenting exponential growth in the volume of health and health-related electronic data, the potential to rapidly and accurately monitor, predict, intervene, and ultimately improve human health and care processes has never been more promising. However, real-world examples leveraging these technologies in an operational context are nascent, and care must be taken to realize the benefits of these resources and methods. Dr. Grannis will share outcomes and lessons learned from recent initiatives supporting precision and population health in the context of one of the country’s largest and longest-tenured health information exchanges. Real world examples will include leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning to identifying patients at risk for high resource utilization, early identification of cancer cases, managing patients in need of social determinants of health wrap-around services, and automated notifiable disease case identification.

9 – Real Quality: A Recipe for Healthier Patients and Happier Doctors (strategy, innovation)

Christian Dankers, MD, MBA - Associate Chief Quality Officer, Partners Healthcare; Harvard Medical School Faculty

Christian Dankers, MD, MBA

Associate Chief Quality Officer, Partners Healthcare; Harvard Medical School Faculty

Dr. Dankers grew up in Monroe, WA and attended Williams College where he studied Philosophy. After college, he worked for three years at the Advisory Board Company in Washington D.C., which provides business strategy research and consulting services for hospitals. He then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he obtained his M.D. and M.B.A. He completed an internal medicine residency at The Massachusetts General Hospital and remained at the MGH for three years following residency, splitting his time between clinical work as a hospitalist and quality and safety work as a member of the Edward P. Lawrence Center for Quality and Safety. In 2013, Dr. Dankers joined the Department of Quality and Safety at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. As Associate Chief Quality Officer, he worked on Hospital-Acquired Condition reduction, mortality reduction, improving the patient experience, and in strengthening safety culture through the application of Just Culture and reliability management principles. In 2018, Dr. Dankers joined Partners Healthcare as the Associate Chief Quality Officer, where he helps oversee ambulatory quality improvement, quality and safety collaboratives, Patient Reported Outcomes work, and the government payment and policy in the Quality, Safety, and Value group. He continues to practice as a hospitalist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Healthcare suffers from a deficit of quality measures that matter to patients, things like how well patients can function, work, and perform activities of daily living, and clinicians are increasingly frustrated by measurement systems that aren’t working and distract them from providing high-quality patient care. To succeed in population health outcomes and clinician buy-in, Partners HealthCare embarked on a comprehensive revamp of its quality measures. By eliminating clinically-irrelevant “noise”, Partners was able to identify meaningful quality insights that are being deployed to improve patient outcomes. This session outlines Partners’ methodologies for choosing the right metrics and extracting actionable insights to improve patient and clinician experience.

10 – Integrating Data and Analytics Into Provider Workflows Improves ACO Quality and Financial Performance (operations, financial)

Joan E. Valentine, RN, MSA - Executive Vice President, Visiting Physician Association, USMM

Joan E. Valentine, RN, MSA

Executive Vice President, Visiting Physician Association, USMM

Joan E. Valentine, RN, MSA is USMM’s Executive Vice President of Visiting Physician Association. She is responsible for all Shared Savings Programs, Quality and Performance Improvement, VPA House Calls Division, VPA Specialty Programs and VPA Diagnostics and Lab. Prior to joining USMM, she held the position of Senior Director of Quality and Clinical Operations for Tenet Health Care Corporation and Michigan Pioneer ACO. Valentine has experience in both health plan as well as provider focused care. She was responsible for development and implementation of multiple clinically integrated programs for Michigan Pioneer ACO resulting in improved care coordination, quality and beneficiary satisfaction and a significant reduction in cost of care. Valentine has served as an advisor to the Post-Acute Care Innovation and Education team for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation as well as an Advisor and speaker for the Advisory Board in Washington, DC. Valentine is a Michigan native with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree from Wayne State University and a Master of Science in Administration from Madonna University.

David C Vezina, MBA - Chief Information Officer, US Medical Management

David C Vezina, MBA

Chief Information Officer, US Medical Management

David Vezina is the Chief Information Officer for US Medical Management and has been instrumental in developing the information systems that allows USMM to achieve high-quality marks coupled with remarkable financial results from the only CMS-approved House Call ACO. His unique perspective was developed from his over thirty-five years of healthcare experience in finance, operations, information technology, and services support. He has served in administrative roles in multiple settings—from military field hospitals to hospital systems and physician practices, including home health, hospice and house calls. He received his B.S. in Accounting and MBA in Management Information Systems from Wayne State University and is a retired Army Medical Services Corp Officer. David currently resides in Rochester Hills, MI with his wife Peggy. He can be reached at dvezina@usmmllc.com.

Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) Accountable Care Organization (ACO) participants are subject to a number of Medicare quality reporting requirements and performance initiatives, including the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS). An ACO’s quality composite score is based on the performance of PQRS Group Practice Reporting Option (GPRO) best practice preventative care and primary care measures. ACO participants may receive as high as a four percent upward or downward payment adjustment based on their quality composite performance. U.S. Medical Management’s (USMM) home based-primary care serves as the foundation for its success as an ACO. USSM will share how it integrated real-time data and analytics into provider workflow, ensuring its patients receive the appropriate primary and preventative care, improving its ACO measure performance, and saving Medicare millions of dollars.

11 – Using Analytics to Increase Cash Flow (financial)

Greg Stock, MPA - President & Chief Executive Officer, Thibodaux Regional Medical Center

Greg Stock, MPA

President & Chief Executive Officer, Thibodaux Regional Medical Center

Greg Stock earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1978 and a Master of Health Care Administration/Public Administration degree from BYU in 1980. After gaining initial exposure with a smaller hospital company, Stock joined HCA in 1981 as a CEO. Over the next nine years, he was CEO of three different HCA hospitals in South Dakota, Missouri, and Oregon. He gained valuable experience leading the financial turnaround of two facilities during that time. Development of new services, recruitment of key physicians, improved productivity and market share gains were realized in both for-profit and not-for-profit settings. Stock came to Louisiana in 1990. Over the next seven years, Thibodaux Regional grew rapidly under his direction. Sixty physicians were recruited. A heart by-pass surgery program, a cancer center, a neuro program and other important services were developed. The physical plant was enlarged; revenue tripled; and income rose from $2,000,000 to $16,000,000. Stock was Chief Executive Officer of Thibodaux Regional from 1990-1997. During that time, he brought the medical center to a significantly higher level of performance. Thibodaux Regional experienced significant growth under Stock’s “results-oriented” leadership. The hospital’s census, both inpatient and outpatient, increased for seven years. In 1997, Stock left Thibodaux for two years to lead Northwest Health System, a two-hospital enterprise in Arkansas with nearly 2000 employees. The sale of the system triggered Stock’s return to Thibodaux. In October 1999, Stock returned to Thibodaux Regional Medical Center. He brings with him valuable professional experiences and important instincts relative to succeeding in today’s often volatile healthcare industry. His collaborative management style, strong physician relations skills, an easy, outgoing manner, sense of humor and ability to challenge his staff to perform at their very best enable him to continue achieving and earning the loyalty and respect of others who also are committed to excellence.

Mikki Fazzio, RHIT, CCS - Director, HIM and Clinical Documentation Improvement, Thibodaux Regional Medical Center

Mikki Fazzio, RHIT, CCS

Director, HIM and Clinical Documentation Improvement, Thibodaux Regional Medical Center

Mikki has been in the Health Information Management field for 12 years and is currently the HIM and Clinical Documentation Improvement Director at Thibodaux Regional Medical Center. Her primary role is to oversee all aspects of the completion, availability, accuracy, and protection of the clinical information within the health record. This includes ensuring that the clinical documentation and coding of the medical record reflects the true severity of illness and risk of mortality of each patient, timely coding and Discharged Not Final Billed (DNFB) management, and Release of Information management.

In today’s healthcare market, financial challenges rank as the number one issue hospitals face. To maintain a margin to support its mission, hospital CEOs are always looking for opportunities to boost revenue through improved reimbursement. Managing discharged not final billed (DNFB) cases, where bills remain incomplete due to coding or documentation gaps, is one important way hospitals can improve financial performance. By expanding the use of analytics to every aspect of its billing services, Thibodaux Regional Medical Center has achieved impressive, sustained results. Three years after Thibodaux Regional launched its initial DNFB redesign effort, it continues to sustain and add to its improvement, realizing $2.4M in additional annual reimbursement and a 61% relative reduction in DNFB dollars, significantly improving its cash flow.

12 – Leveraging Predictive Models to Reduce Readmissions (AI, operations, analyst)

Rhiannon Harms - Executive Director, Strategic Analytics, UnityPoint Health

Rhiannon Harms

Executive Director, Strategic Analytics, UnityPoint Health

Rhiannon Harms is the Executive Director of Strategic Analytics at UnityPoint Health, where she leads efforts to deliver best-in-class analytics solutions across a large multi-state, integrated delivery system located in the Midwest. With expertise across clinical, operational, and financial domains, Rhiannon is a nationally recognized analytics leader focused on partnering with business leaders to solve for today’s healthcare opportunities and with clinical care teams to use data to save lives.

Ben Cleveland - Data Scientist, UnityPoint Health

Ben Cleveland

Data Scientist, UnityPoint Health

Ben Cleveland is a Data Scientist at UnityPoint Health in Strategic Analytics. He designs and operationalizes data products that utilize advanced data modeling techniques for the purposes of clinical excellence, strategic planning, and improvement within a large health system. His machine learning and visualization tools are in active use across the enterprise, from executive leadership to clinicians and care teams. Cleveland is a nationally recognized data science practitioner with speaking invitations at analytics, IT, and population health events across the country. His work was awarded the 2016 Project of the Year in Patient Safety from Health Data Management, Finalist for the 2016 ANNY Award from the International Institute for Analytics, and first place in the 2018 Healthcare Informatics Innovator Awards.

Far too often analytics efforts have fallen short of making a tangible impact on outcomes because they haven’t been successfully implemented in real workflows. Predictive models remain at risk of becoming isolated in their use along the continuum of care where their integration may provide benefits larger than the sum of each silo. UnityPoint Health (UPH) focused on integrating analytical models within the same readmission reduction strategy and coaching the care team to facilitate their adoption. Using this approach, one of UPH hospital’s risk-adjusted readmission indexes improved 40 percent over three years, surpassing internal system targets in performance and becoming the top performer in the health system. This session will provide an overview of the analytics tools and methods UPH used, including innovative individualized risk heat-maps generated for each patient, strategies for analytics adoption, and lessons learned along the way.

13 – Standardizing the Collection of Social and Economic Risk Data (pop health, strategy)

Andrew Hamilton, RN, BSN, MS - Chief Informatics Officer, Deputy Director, Alliance Chicago

Andrew Hamilton, RN, BSN, MS

Chief Informatics Officer, Deputy Director, Alliance Chicago

Andrew is a Masters prepared Nurse Informaticist with 17 years of experience in both in-patient nursing care and outpatient community health as well as nursing administration. As the Chief Informatics Officer, Andrew is responsible for developing clinical decision support and National Clinical Performance Measures and integrating them into electronic health records. He is leading the organization’s efforts related to developing Health IT support for Meaningful Use, Patient-Centered Medical Homes, and Care Coordination. Recently, Andrew launched, designed, and led the development of an innovative Enterprise Data Warehouse program to support quality reporting, research, and care coordination. Prior to working for the Alliance, Andrew was a Pediatric Critical Care nurse and a member of a large academic hospital Health IT team supporting the implementation of clinical information systems. He has also served as the Director of Patient Care Services for Howard Brown Health Center, a federally qualified look-a-like community health center. Andrew is the Past President of the Board of the Centricity Healthcare User Group (CHUG) and is also a member of several local, state, and national working groups related to Health IT and performance measurement. In addition, he is as an adjunct faculty at Loyola University School of Nursing and the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Nursing. Andrew holds a BS in Nursing and MS in Nursing Business and Health Systems Administration with a focus on Nursing Informatics from the University Of Michigan School Of Nursing. Andrew is a Fellow of the third class of the Health Innovators Fellowship and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.

Providers serving complex, underserved populations need tools and strategies to identify the social and economic factors impacting health. Identifying and managing these factors is especially important in today’s value-based pay environment, where providers are increasingly held accountable for reaching quality targets and lowering costs of care. The Protocol for Responding to and Assessing Patients’ Assets, Risks and Experiences (PRAPARE) is a national effort to help health centers and other providers collect and apply the data they need to better understand their patients’ social and economic risks to transform care to meet patient and population needs, and demonstrate the value they bring to patients, communities, and payers. This session will discuss how data on patient social risk is foundational for driving delivery system and payment reform.

14 – Using a Real-Time Data Science Platform to Drive Perioperative Quality and Efficiency (analyst, AI, clinical)

Bala G. Nair, PhD - Director and Associate Professor, University of Washington

Bala G. Nair, PhD

Director and Associate Professor, University of Washington

Dr.Nair is the director of the Center for Perioperative & Pain Initiatives in Quality Safety & Outcome (PPiQSO) at University of Washington and holds an associate professor appointment in the Department of Anesthesiology & Pain Medicine. He is also the Chief Solution Architect and technology advisor for Perimatics LLC. Dr.Nair brings over 20 years of considerable expertise in perioperative informatics, clinical decision support and medical devices from two world-class institutions – The Cleveland Clinic and the University of Washington. Dr.Nair is the inventor of the Smart Anesthesia Manager (SAM) decision support software that has improved care for over 500,000 surgery patients in multiple hospitals. In his previous appointment at the Cleveland Clinic, he developed their anesthesia information management system that was showcased to President George W Bush. Dr.Nair has over 50 publications in peer-reviewed journals, holds 7 patents and has been an invited speaker on perioperative decision support in multiple national and international conferences.

Perioperative care for surgery patients contribute to more than 50% of a hospital’s revenue. However, due to the complexity and dynamic nature of the perioperative environment, delivering optimal and efficient care is challenging. Real-time perioperative data science platforms support a wide ecosystem of data and technology solutions including real-time decision support, machine learning predictive models, and robotic business intelligence. Learn about solutions built on these platforms that have: delivered a return on investment (ROI) of $1.2 million per 10,000 surgeries in terms of quality of care using the real-time decision support and guidance system in over 400,000 surgeries; improved efficiencies, resulting in a potential to reduce overage by $263,000 using machine learning models to predict operating room and post-anesthesia care unit occupancy times; reduced surgical supplies cost by $565,000 using robotic business intelligence algorithms.

15 – Improving Risk Adjustment Coding Accuracy with Analytics (financial, operations)

Rod Christensen, MD - Vice President, Medical Operations, Allina Health

Rod Christensen, MD

Vice President, Medical Operations, Allina Health

Rod Christensen, MD is a board-certified family medicine physician with over 25 years of practice. For the last 12 years, he has held a variety of operational leadership positions in Allina Health, including leading primary care, with a focus on clinical quality and patient experience. He currently serves as Vice President of Medical Operations, where his focus is on Triple Aim performance on risk-based contracts for Allina Health and for the Allina Integrated Medical Network (AIMN). He serves on the AIM Network Board of Directors and chairs the Clinical Performance Committee.

Miriah Dahlquist, DPT, CAPM - Senior Performance Improvement Consultant, Allina Health

Miriah Dahlquist, DPT, CAPM

Senior Performance Improvement Consultant, Allina Health

Miriah Dahlquist, DPT, CAPM is the Senior Performance Improvement Consultant at Allina Integrated Medical Network, the clinically integrated network division of Allina Health. In her role, Miriah manages key network clinical performance initiatives between Allina Health and independent physician practices and engages them in development and improvement. She leverages combined EMR and claims data on ACO populations to create impactful statistics, demonstrate opportunity, and reduce clinical variation to provide proactive population health management and succeed in value-based risk contracts.

The Hierarchical Condition Category (HCC) risk adjustment model is used by CMS to estimate predicted costs for Medicare beneficiaries, and the results directly impact the reimbursement healthcare organizations receive. CMS requires that all qualifying conditions be identified each year by provider organizations. Documentation that is linked to a non-specific diagnosis, as well as incomplete documentation, negatively affects reimbursement. Despite providing care to a patient population that is not significantly less complex than the national population, Allina Health’s HCC coding for CMS risk adjustment was historically lower than both national and regional averages for Medicare ACO cohorts. Discover how it optimized its EMR, data, analytics, and provided widespread education to enable better documentation of care for patients with chronic diseases, leading to more accurate HCC risk adjustment coding—and more appropriate compensation for the quality care it provides.

16 – Detecting, Monitoring, and Preventing Patient Safety Events (clinical, pop health)

Robert Quickel, MD, FACS - Vice President, Surgery and Procedural Care, Allina Health

Robert Quickel, MD, FACS

Vice President, Surgery and Procedural Care, Allina Health

Dr. Robert Quickel is the Vice President of Surgery and Procedural Care, and oversees the Virginia Piper Cancer Institute for Allina Health. He chairs the Allina Safety Committee, in addition to chairing the Minnesota Hospital Association’s Surgery and Procedural Care Committee. Dr. Quickel attended the University of Minnesota Medical School, and completed his general surgery residency at Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, MA before completing his fellowship in Surgical Critical Care at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, WI. He practiced trauma surgery at Hennepin County Medical Center from 2001-2015.

Kassie Ryan, RN, MSN - Improvement Specialist, Health Catalyst at Allina Health

Kassie Ryan, RN, MSN

Improvement Specialist, Health Catalyst at Allina Health

Kassie is a nurse informaticist with experience in bedside nursing, healthcare order set and alert build, and quality improvement in regulatory and safety. She holds a BSN in Nursing and an MSN in Nursing Informatics. Kassie’s current focus is leading quality improvement projects at Allina Health in areas of regulatory, clinical quality, and safety.

More than 21 percent of people in the US report experiencing [DK1] a medical error in their own care, and 33 percent report an error in the medical care of a relative or friend. Current manual regulatory reporting approaches find less than 5 percent of all-cause harm using data at least 30-days old and require extensive time and resources. Allina Health, an integrated healthcare delivery system, was looking to improve the safety of the patients cared for at its facilities. Allina is now on the path to automate patient safety surveillance through the use of triggers and to develop embedded clinical workflow algorithms, enabling interventions before harm occurs. In this session, Allina will share its patient safety journey learnings, including developing a culture of safety, improving processes and communications, and gaining analytics insights. Learn how they have effectively used their learnings with three different patient safety challenges.

17 – Privacy Analytics: A Johns Hopkins Case Study – Using AI to Stop Data Breaches (technical, AI)

Robert Lord - President & Co-Founder of Protenus

Robert Lord

President & Co-Founder of Protenus

Robert Lord is the President and Co-Founder of Protenus, an analytics platform that leverages artificial intelligence to detect data breaches in healthcare. Protenus protects the nation’s top healthcare systems, ensuring trust for tens of millions of patients, and was named the 2016 International Association of Privacy Professionals’ Privacy Innovator of the Year. Robert is a Fellow at New America and the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology, and teaches courses on entrepreneurship at Johns Hopkins. He has been named to the Baltimore Business Journal’s “Tech 10” and to Becker’s Hospital Review’s “Healthcare Entrepreneurs to Know.” Before co-founding Protenus, Robert was an MD candidate at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Robert received his A.B. in Social Studies, magna cum laude, from Harvard University.

A person’s medical record can be sold for ten times what their credit card goes for on the black market, making it a common target for attacks. This session takes you through a Johns Hopkins Case Study and their journey to implement privacy analytics. This practical application of AI resulted in a highly accurate model that reviewed every access to patient data and detected when the EHR was potentially exposed to a privacy violation, attack, or breach. Specific techniques, including supervised and unsupervised machine learning and explainability of AI techniques, advanced Johns Hopkins toward their current state—a predictive, analytics-based, collaborative privacy analytics infrastructure.

This session will enable users to:

Define the cultural shift and identify stakeholders critical to a privacy analytics implementation
Describe how to measure privacy and security outcomes
Identify methods for demonstrating privacy and security ROI

24 – How Automating and Virtualizing the Hell Out of Healthcare Is the Only Way to Save It (strategy, innovation)

Lyle Berkowitz, MD, FACP, FHIMSS - Chief Medical Officer and EVP of Product, MDLIVE, President, MDLIVE Medical Group

Lyle Berkowitz, MD, FACP, FHIMSS

Chief Medical Officer and EVP of Product, MDLIVE, President, MDLIVE Medical Group

Lyle Berkowitz, MD, FACP, FHIMSS is a primary care physician, a digital healthcare innovator and a health tech entrepreneur. He is Chief Medical Officer and EVP of Product for MDLIVE, as well as President of the MDLIVE Medical Group, one of the largest virtual primary care groups in the nation. He is also the co-founder and Chairman of healthfinch, Board Member of Oneview Healthcare, the Executive Director of the Szollosi Healthcare Innovation Program and previous Director of Innovation for Northwestern Medicine. He serves on the Governance Board of the Innovation Learning Network, the Advisory Board of the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems, the Editorial Board for Clinical Innovation + Technology, and is the author of Innovation with Information Technologies in Healthcare. He has been listed as one of HealthLeader’s “Twenty People Who Make Healthcare Better”; Healthspottr’s “Future Health Top 100”, and Modern Healthcare’s “Top 25 Clinical Informaticists”. He is an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. You can find him at www.DrLyle.com and @DrLyleMD

The statistics are staggering: 40% of Americans do not have a primary care physician (PCP); of those who do, 50% don’t get even the basic care they need due to issues with time, distance, cost, and appointment inavailability. Problems with primary care accessibility to patients are regularly blamed on a severe shortage of PCPs. But, we don’t really have a PCP shortage—just a shortage of efficiency in using them. Saving our primary care system requires the “double whammy” of automation and virtualization.

Virtualization is critical to providing care to patients who can’t easily get into a PCP office easily due to distance, time, and cost. But, it is not scalable by itself—scalability requires automation. Together, automation and virtualization allow one doctor to take care of at least twice as many patients in a significantly higher-quality manner. Combining automation and virtualization will lead to the rise of the virtualist—the Netflix of Healthcare—where 80% of care can and should be done online (where patients want it delivered), so that the 20% who really need to see a doctor in the office will have the ability to easily get an appointment and the time they deserve with their PCP.

Join in this lively discussion to learn about the automated and virtual future of primary care delivery with Lyle Berkowitz, MD, FACP, FHIMSS, a PCP, digital healthcare innovator and health tech entrepreneur, and Chief Medical Officer and EVP of Product for MDLIVE, as well as President of the MDLIVE Medical Group, one of the largest virtual primary care groups in the nation.

25 – Towards Proactive, Predictive, and Personalized Care: How Startups are Using Data Science to Build a Better Future for Healthcare (innovation, AI)

Steven Collens - Chief Executive Officer, MATTER

Steven Collens

Chief Executive Officer, MATTER

Steven Collens is CEO of MATTER, the healthcare technology incubator and innovation center. MATTER opened in February 2015 and nurtures entrepreneurs and innovators building next-generation health IT, medical device, diagnostic and biopharma technologies. MATTER works with 200 healthcare technology ventures and the company partners with 10 hospitals and health systems, 5 universities and more than 50 industry-leading companies. Steven is also a senior advisor at Pritzker Group Venture Capital. Prior to assuming his current role, Steven was senior vice president at Pritzker Group, the investment firm led by Tony and J.B. Pritzker. In that capacity, he led the team that created 1871, Chicago’s center for digital startups that now houses more than 400 early-stage companies. He previously worked at Abbott in a variety of domestic and international functions, including product management, policy and public affairs. In 2005, Steven helped found ConstantWellness.com to give patients control over their health data and allow healthcare providers to coordinate care of their patients. Prior to Abbott, Steven served as legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Carol Moseley-Braun. Steven holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and a BA from Washington University in St. Louis. He serves on the boards of 1871, the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, the Chicago High School for the Arts and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, and is a member of ChicagoNEXT, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s council on technology and innovation. He is also a Leadership Greater Chicago fellow and a member of the Economic Club of Chicago and the Commercial Club of Chicago.

The healthcare system is moving from one where patients interact with care episodically and reactively, toward a future where healthcare is proactive, predictive, and personalized. Currently, patients wait to see a doctor when they are sick—soon, healthcare will come to the patient before they even realize they have a medical problem. The technology and analytics capabilities needed to make this future happen are rapidly advancing as innovative healthcare startups work toward a new healthcare model where proactive, predictive, and personalized care is a reality for all patients.

Join Steven Collens, CEO of MATTER, to learn about trends in healthcare startup innovations, current focuses of healthcare digital entrepreneurs, and examples of how cutting-edge companies are harnessing healthcare data in new and novel ways. MATTER is the premier health technology collaborative that includes more than 200 start-ups and 70 industry partners committed to improving health and care for every patient. MATTER start-ups have raised $528 million in financing and their solutions have thus far benefited 76 million patients.

This presentation will provide attendees with:

Insight into how healthcare entrepreneurs are leveraging data and digital technology to build the future of healthcare.
Tips for working effectively with startups and building internal innovation capacity to create real value for patients.

26 – Adding Capacity Without Construction: A Collaboration of Analytics and Frontline Operations (operations, analyst)

Yohan Vetteth, M.B.A - Chief Analytics Officer, Stanford HealthCare

Yohan Vetteth, M.B.A

Chief Analytics Officer, Stanford HealthCare

Mr. Vetteth is the Chief Analytics Officer at Stanford Health Care. His responsibilities include driving clinical, operational and business improvement efforts through data analytics and reporting, establishing and maintaining the enterprise data governance processes.

Mr. Vetteth joined Stanford in 2011 from Accenture, where he was a Partner and led the Healthcare IT Strategy practice in the US. His clients included both healthcare providers and payers who he worked with to develop and implement IT and Analytics enabled business strategies.

Prior to Accenture, Yohan held leadership positions at multiple entrepreneurial ventures that included Jamcracker and vCIO. At Jamcracker, Yohan was part of the initial senior executive team that launched one of the pioneering cloud computing platforms that integrated early stage SaaS offerings. He was also a member of the high-tech strategy practice of Arthur D. Little, where he helped leading tech companies formulate their business and technology strategies.

Yohan holds a Masters of Business Administration from the University of San Francisco where he was both a McLaren Fellow and a member of the Beta Gamma Sigma Honor Society. He also earned a Bachelor of Science (Physics) from Loyola College in Madras, India.

Rudy Arthofer, RN, BSN, MHA - Administrative Director of the Hospital Operations Center, Stanford HealthCare

Rudy Arthofer, RN, BSN, MHA

Administrative Director of the Hospital Operations Center, Stanford HealthCare

Mr. Arthofer is the Administrative Director for the Hospital Operations Center at Stanford HealthCare. His responsibility is to the development and ongoing management of the governance/structure, data/processing, and organizational change management for these three priorities:

Enhanced situational awareness across Stanford Hospital – monitoring clinical and non-clinical support departments and their impact on patient flow
Develop tools to track patients through their expected care path, early recognition of variation including both affiliated and integrated sites
Maximize data management to enhance the organizational decision-making process to maximize capacity, including predictive modeling

Mr. Arthofer joined Stanford in 2007 where he started as a patient care manager focusing on inpatient care. He then changed roles and spent three years on special projects for the organization including being the Clinical Manager for Transition Strategy of the new 820,000 square foot hospital that will open in 2019. The last two years he has been developing the new Hospital Operation Center. Rudy holds a Masters in Healthcare Administration from the University of North Carolina and a Bachelors Degree in Nursing from the University of Maine.

Stanford Health Care, like many high-volume healthcare organizations, had a perennial need to find cost-effective solutions to manage its need for increased capacity. At one point, Stanford had to utilize a mobile surge unit (MSU) to support its emergency department(ED) in the winter months. Discover how Stanford used data and predictive analytics to improve its capacity and provide increased patient access, without the costly and time-consuming process of adding bricks and mortar. Using analytics insights, Stanford improved the efficiency and capacity of its ED and inpatient beds, reduced the number of cancelled cases, decreased ED boarding hours, and avoided use of the MSU. Learn three, key interventions Stanford used to develop its operational countermeasures to improve capacity: a daily dashboard, a 24/48-hour discharge prediction, and an annual capacity assessment.

27 – Turning Data Analysts into Data Scientists (technical, innovation)

Imran Qureshi - Chief Software Development Officer, Health Catalyst

The value of predictive analytics in healthcare settings is well-established. In fact, 47 percent of health system CIOs say they plan to increase predictive analytics spending in the coming months. But how can you get a great return on that investment? The most common strategy is to hire data scientists. While data scientists are critical to any predictive analytics program, they are also difficult to find and expensive to hire. And new hires always take a long time to become productive. What if there were another solution — one that already exists in your organization? With the latest technology advancements, you can now effectively turn your encumbent data analysts into citizen data scientists. By focusing on a small set of artificial intelligence (AI) problems with known solutions, learning some basic data science principles and tools, and following the lead of an in-house or consulting data scientist, your data analysts can lead the way on your organization’s AI journey.

This session, designed for data analysts and their managers, covers a seven-step program for easily incorporating key data science principles and tools into analysts’ everyday actions. Starting with the use case of predicting readmissions, we’ll walk through how to organize the data, apply AI algorithms to generate predictions, and present the predictions to clinicians in the right way so that they are accepted.

28 – Population Health Innovations Deliver Significant Cost Savings and Improved Health Outcomes (pop health)

Dave Jackson, MBA - Director Digital Operations, Airdrie & Area Health Co-op

Dave Jackson, MBA

Director Digital Operations, Airdrie & Area Health Co-op

Dave is the Director of Digital Operations for the Airdrie & Area Health Co-op (AAHC). AAHC is a community-wide initiative which aims to empower individuals, providers, and organizations to “Our Your Own Health”, with the goal of becoming Canada’s Healthiest Community. Dave is responsible for developing a digital strategy for a digital health ecosystem through a connection of systems ranging from health & healthcare providers, municipal, government, schools, and local businesses. AAHC is part of a full community effort recognizing that in order to truly affect health, it needs to be a group effort with the individual at the center. Prior to working with AAHC, Dave has spent time with Alberta Health Services (AHS) and the World Health Organization (WHO) working on end-user focussed systems to connect and utilize data from disparate data sources. He was also the first data manager for the Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network (CPCSSN), which extracted and utilized data from over 15 different Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) across Canada.

Shauna Thome, B.Mgt - Executive Director, Crowfoot Village Family Practice

Shauna Thome, B.Mgt

Executive Director, Crowfoot Village Family Practice

Shauna Thome was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta where she completed a Diploma in Health Information Management (SAIT), a diploma in Business Administration, Accounting (SAIT) and a Bachelor of Management, Human Resources (University of Lethbridge). Shauna joined as the Executive Director of Crowfoot Village Family Practice(CVFP) in 2011. Prior to that, she held a variety of leadership roles within the Department of Cardiac Sciences at Alberta Health Services. Shauna is inspired by the team at CVFP, specifically, the deep-rooted commitment to the mission of providing outstanding care in a patient-centered health home. In her spare time, Shauna enjoys spending time with friends and family, traveling, cooking, hiking or hitting up a spin class (or 5!).

Crowfoot Village Family Practice (CVFP), a medical home to over 25,000 people in Calgary, Alberta, and the Airdrie & Area Health Cooperative (AAHC), an organization serving the city of Airdrie and surrounding areas, will share their population health innovations. Discover how CVFP’s leadership, vision, and values-driven culture resulted in population-based quality improvements: same day access (reduced wait times from 15 to zero days); an estimated $6M in cost savings associated with reduced emergency department usage and hospital length of stay; and improved health outcomes. And, learn how AAHC’s “Smart Healthy Community Project” is expanding beyond just the medical home to the entire community—the municipality, physicians, businesses, schools, churches, and other community organizations. AAHC will discuss how it will leverage and connect its existing infrastructure, and add new technologies and applications to create an open data platform for the community.

29 – Integrating Clinical Improvement and Activity Based Costing Identifies Pathway to Healthier Moms and Babies (clinical, financial)

Hyagriv Simhan, MD, MS - Executive Vice Chair, Obstetrical Services, UPMC

Hyagriv Simhan, MD, MS

Executive Vice Chair, Obstetrical Services, UPMC

Hyagriv Simhan, MD, MS is Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences, Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Executive Vice Chair for Obstetrical Services at Magee-Womens Hospital at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), and Director of Patient Care Delivery Innovation and Technology at UPMC. Dr. Simhan completed his undergraduate studies and medical school at Boston University. Following completion of internship and residency in Obstetrics & Gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Simhan completed fellowship training in Maternal-Fetal Medicine and Reproductive Infectious Diseases and Immunology. He also received a Master of Science in Clinical Research from the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Simhan is an experienced clinical and translational perinatal researcher, with focus on preterm birth. He was a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on “Preterm Birth: Causes, Consequences, and Prevention” and a co-author of the Committee’s report. He is active in establishing and implementing obstetrical patient safety and health care quality efforts, including obstetrical crisis medical emergency teams and labor induction process improvement. These efforts have been acknowledged through receipt of the Fine Award for Health Care Quality Improvement from the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative and the Hospital Association of Pennsylvania, Achievement Award for Health Care Quality Improvement/Patient Safety.

Beth Quinn, MSN, RNC-MNN - Program Director, Women’s Health Services, UPMC

Beth Quinn, MSN, RNC-MNN

Program Director, Women’s Health Services, UPMC

Beth Quinn MSN, RNC-MNN, is the Program Director in Women’s Health Services. She works in a dual role between Magee- Womens Hospital of UPMC and the UPMC Health Plan. Beth has been a nurse for UPMC for over 20 years working in Women’s Health. Beth acts as a change agent to design, facilitate, monitor, evaluate and sustain program improvement initiatives across the UPMC service line. In her dual role, she is to develop new and unique methods to improve operations of the organization and to create new opportunities to enhance the payer-provider relationships. Beth is also responsible for setting goals and new initiatives according to the strategic objectives of both organizations to improve patient engagement and outcomes.

Nationally, one in ten pregnant women develops gestational diabetes (GDM), increasing the chance of negative outcomes for both mom and baby. Clinical leaders know early treatment will impact the outcomes, but early identification of these patients poses its own set of challenges. To address these challenges, The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) uses a service line management approach, coupled with an activity-based costing solution. An advantage of this organizational structure is the ability to easily access integrated clinical and financial information for a specific patient population. Come and learn how an interdisciplinary team, including clinicians and finance, developed an improvement proposal with a return on investment (ROI) projection to gain executive sponsorship and clinician engagement. Providing clinicians with detailed information about the effectiveness of the interventions resulted in the development of a pathway for clinical screening and interventions to benefit moms and babies.

30 – Machine Learning Marketplace (new to HAS 18) (AI, innovation)

The Machine Learning Marketplace is a unique 2-hour breakout that will provide attendees a broad exposure to a wide variety of innovative use cases for machine learning in healthcare. This session will be divided into two segments

The first hour segment will consist of 10 health systems presenting 5-minute overviews of how they are using machine learning. The audience will be seated and able to see a broad array of use cases, and determine which of the use cases they would like to investigate further.
The second hour segment will consist of the audience walking around and conversing directly with the 10 health systems in individual walkabout stations. Each of the 10 health systems will be available to explain more in depth about their machine learning projects, including results and key lessons learned.
Case studies included in this session include using machine learning to assist in real-time inpatient care, detecting errors in medical data (comorbidities), optimizing no-show rates, determining risk modeling in falls, maintaining machine learning models after launching, predicting no-show patients, determining opioid risk, assessing readmission risks, and analyzing unstructured data, VOC data, and social media data to create actionable insights. Click for more detailed information.

31 – Analysts Surf the Tsunami of Healthcare Data (analyst, fun)

John Wadsworth - Senior Vice President of Client Engagement, Health Catalyst

John Wadsworth

Senior Vice President of Client Engagement, Health Catalyst

John joined Health Catalyst in September 2011 as a senior data architect. Prior to Health Catalyst, he worked for Intermountain Healthcare and for ARUP Laboratories as a data architect. John has a Master of Science degree in biomedical informatics from the University of Utah, School of Medicine.

Good surfers are the consummate analysts. They dynamically process streams of seemingly unrelated information bypassing lesser opportunities, then surgically select the perfect wave.

The ability to tease out genuine opportunities amidst a tumult of noise is a hallmark of great analysts. In this session, John will:

Explore the human elements of a great analyst
Re-frame the role of technology in analysis
Highlight healthcare knowledge required to maximize the value of the healthcare analyst

John has presented every year at the Healthcare Analytic Summit. His sessions fill up fast because attendees consistently rate his session as a conference highlight. His engaging presentation style leverages simple and fun analogies to galvanize key concepts for technical, clinical, and executive audiences alike. This year, he brings principles from the world of surfing and applies them to healthcare analytics.

32 – The Data Maze Game: Navigating the Complexities of Data Governance (strategy, fun)

Thomas D. Burton, MBA - Co-founder and President, Professional Services, Health Catalyst

Thomas D. Burton, MBA

Co-founder and President, Professional Services, Health Catalyst

Mr. Burton is a Co-founder and President, Professional Services of Health Catalyst. His leadership and decades of experience in business intelligence, analytics, and process improvement have helped many care delivery systems significantly improve clinical, operational, and financial outcomes. Mr. Burton was a member of the team that led Intermountain Healthcare’s nationally recognized improvements in quality of care delivery and reductions in cost. He has taught courses on the Toyota Production System, Agile Software Development, value-based care, and data system design at various institutes including Intermountain Healthcare’s Institute for Health Care Delivery Research and Stanford’s Clinical Effectiveness Leadership Training. He has also given presentations at the Healthcare Analytics Summit and HIMSS. Mr. Burton holds an MBA and a BS in Computer Science from BYU.

Mike Noke - Senior Vice President, Professional Services, Health Catalyst

Mike Noke

Senior Vice President, Professional Services, Health Catalyst

Mike Noke is a healthcare information technology leader with over 15 years of experience driving the effective use of strategic corporate data assets. In both technical and non-technical roles, his experiences include 10+ years of increasing responsibility in developing, implementing, and managing complex technology in rapidly changing environments. Mike’s experiences range from small start-ups to large multi-national organizations. Currently, Mike serves as the Senior Vice President, Professional Services at Health Catalyst, an organization based in Salt Lake City, UT focused on improving healthcare outcomes through the use of data and technology. Prior to Health Catalyst, Mike served as the IS Associate Director of the Enterprise Data Warehouse at Partners Healthcare, a delivery system founded by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital and includes community and specialty hospitals, a managed care organization, a physician network, community health centers, home care and other health-related entities. Mike holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of New Hampshire and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Miami. He is also an avid triathlete having recently completed his first Ironman. Mike lives in Norfolk, MA with his wife and twin sons

Most organizations struggle to turn their data into a strategic asset. They lack the data they need, and often don’t trust the data they have. They struggle to surface meaningful opportunities, quantify the value of those opportunities, and transform insight into action.

In this game-based learning session, your hosts Tom Burton and Mike Noke will help participants learn strategies for improving data literacy, ensuring data quality, and expanding data utilization. Be prepared to have fun in this interactive and collaborative experience, where you’ll discover how investing in a deliberate, principle-based strategy can help you navigate the complexities of data governance and maximize the value of data for outcomes improvement.

33 – Addressing the Super-Utilizer Patient Challenge (pop health)

Scott Pingree - Chief Strategy Officer, Community Care & Systems Chair, Super-Utilizer Care, Intermountain Healthcare

Scott Pingree

Chief Strategy Officer, Community Care & Systems Chair, Super-Utilizer Care, Intermountain Healthcare

Scott Pingree leads Strategy for Community Care at Intermountain Healthcare, one of two enterprise operating pillars. Intermountain Healthcare is an integrated delivery system of 22 hospitals, approximately 1,500 employed physicians, a health plan that insures 800,000 lives, and 38,000 employees serving patients in the state of Utah and southern Idaho.

As a system contributor, Scott serves as the System Chair of Super-Utilizer Care for Intermountain Healthcare. Scott has led a team of senior leaders in reviewing and recommending opportunities for improvement in the delivery of care for the top 1 to 5% of super-utilizer patients across the system. He has presented at numerous conferences on Intermountain’s work with super-utilizers. He is a contributor to Intermountain Healthcare’s vision for Population Health where hospitals, physicians, payers and patients all have a share of responsibility for health outcomes. Intermountain’s work with super-utilizers has been cited in Harvard Business Review Blog, US News & World Report, Modern Healthcare, Healthleaders Media, Integrated Healthcare Executive and the Advisory Board Care Transformation Center Blog.

Scott received his Master in Public Administration from Harvard University and Master in Business Administration from Brigham Young University.

The top 5% of patients—sometimes referred to as “hotspotters”—account for more than 50% of total healthcare costs in the U.S. Intermountain’s quantitative assessment, initiated in 2011, identified hotspotters to engage patients in their own care and provide higher quality of care at lower cost. The session will delve into what Intermountain learned during their journey as an integrated delivery system as they initiated three interventions across five geographies. The session also summarizes the quantitative and qualitative outcomes of the interventions, such as reduction in utilization.

This session will enable users to:

Define “hotspotting” and how it can impact a healthcare system’s outcomes
Identify specific tactics for initiating hotspotting in an integrated healthcare system
Review patient feedback and patient engagement in their care
Review lessons learned

34 – Transforming Emergency Care with Analytics and Technologies (clinical, operations)

Linda Hummel, RN, BSN, MS - Vice President, Quality and Safety, Mission Health System

Linda Hummel, RN, BSN, MS

Vice President, Quality and Safety, Mission Health System

Linda Hummel RN, BSN, MHA, is System Vice-President of Safety and Quality at Mission Health System where she actively leads the journey of creating a patient and family-centered care culture with a focus on patient safety and quality at Mission Health System since December 2013. Ms. Hummel, RN, has been a practicing professional nurse for over 36 years. She is a 2004 graduate of the National Patient Safety Leadership Fellowship sponsored by Health Forum and the American Hospital Association. She has received a Master of Health Service and Administration from the University of St. Francis in Joliet, Illinois. She has participated as an active team member and co-author of application for achieving recognition from Lincoln Foundation for Excellence Illinois state quality award and a National Baldrige Application. She was an active member of a team with University Healthcare Consortium in writing a white paper and facilitating a conference to share with all members regarding the need for a "Culture of a Constant State of Readiness" for quality and patient safety.

Richard “Rick” Lee, MSN, RN, CEN, NE-BC - Executive Director, Emergency Services, Mission Health

Richard “Rick” Lee, MSN, RN, CEN, NE-BC

Executive Director, Emergency Services, Mission Health

Rick Lee is the Executive Director for Emergency Services at Mission Health located in Asheville, NC. He began his nursing career as a United States Naval Officer where he completed 12 years of service before transitioning into emergency care leading ED teams for another 17 years. He holds a Master’s degree in Nursing with a leadership specialization and maintains specialty certifications as a Nurse Executive (NE-BC) and Emergency Nurse (CEN). As Executive Director, Rick’s leadership involves the operations and strategic vision for six emergency departments under Mission Health and its Member Hospitals. In CY 2017, these emergency departments combined for greater than 175,000 visits. Rick‘s service line leadership includes the Mission Regional Transport, Mountain Area Medical Airlift and EMS services for Mitchell, Madison and Yancey Counties in North Carolina. Rick’s vision is to lead Mission Health’s emergency services’ teams to benchmark status. Rick relocated with his wife and two children to Asheville, NC in July 2015 to join the Mission Health team. His goal was to help lead an ED team ready for change and transformation. Rick brings with him the passion and desire to pull all stakeholders together to achieve outcomes felt unachievable by many. He thrives on achieving goals that weren’t meant to be achieved. His Standout strengths are “Influencer” and “Stimulator” and with these strengths he challenges the stakeholders to achieve what’s best for the patients, community and team members.

More than half of all U.S. hospitals report over-crowding, one-third report an increase in ambulance diversion, and 90 percent report they frequently operate “at” or “over” capacity, risking the ability to effectively provide emergency care to those who need it and contributing to patient dissatisfaction. Learn how Mission Health employed a data-driven systems approach to dramatically improve every aspect of its emergency care—dramatically improving wait times and throughput, reducing left without being seen rates, and achieving a threefold improvement in patient ranking for overall quality of care and provider communication.

35 – Innovative Analytics: Using Analytics to Evaluate Emerging Technologies (innovation, operations)

Shaina Witt - Manager, CV Clinical Programs/Services, Allina Health

Shaina Witt

Manager, CV Clinical Programs/Services, Allina Health

Chelsey Thomas - Senior Analytics Engineer, Health Catalyst at Allina Health

Chelsey Thomas

Senior Analytics Engineer, Health Catalyst at Allina Health

Pam Rush - Clinical Program Director, Cardiovascular Clinical Service Line, Allina Health

Pam Rush

Clinical Program Director, Cardiovascular Clinical Service Line, Allina Health

Ms. Rush received her BS in Nursing from Arizona State University and MS in Nursing Administration from the University of Minnesota. She has worked in healthcare for over 20 years in critical care, nursing administration, cardiovascular program development, and leading clinical and operational performance improvement efforts. She is currently the Clinical Program Director for the Cardiovascular Clinical Service Line at Allina Health, which consists of 12 hospitals and over 90 clinics. In 2016, she co-created the Minneapolis Heart Institute Center for Health Care Delivery Innovation which focuses on optimizing care across the cardiovascular continuum through improving population health management, reducing clinical variation, testing new processes of care and payment models, and leveraging cutting-edge technology. The outcome of this work is an engine to reliably drive financial performance, clinical outcomes, and operational efficiency.

Steven M. Bradley, MD, MPH - General Cardiologist, Minneapolis Hearth Institute

Steven M. Bradley, MD, MPH

General Cardiologist, Minneapolis Hearth Institute

Dr. Steven Bradley is a General Cardiologist at the Minneapolis Heart Institute (MHI) and a trained epidemiologist and health services researcher with interests focused on understanding the determinants of high-quality and high-value cardiovascular care. Dr. Bradley is the immediate-past Associate Director of the Veterans Affairs CART Program, which is the national clinical quality program for procedures performed in VA cardiac catheterization labs. Building on this experience, Dr. Bradley now serves as the Associate Director of the MHI Center for Healthcare Delivery Innovation to identify data-driven opportunities to improve patient outcomes and experience, clinical quality, and value of cardiovascular care. In addition, Dr. Bradley serves as the Chair of Science for the American Heart Association Get With the Guidelines – Resuscitation, member of the American College of Cardiology National Cardiovascular Data Registry (NCDR) Management Board, and Associate Editor for JAMA Network Open.

Emerging technologies and therapies have the potential to improve patient safety and outcomes. Randomized control trials (RCTs) study efficacy: whether a treatment produces the expected results. While incredibly important, RCTs often include carefully selected patient populations under ideal conditions that may not reflect the reality of the practice setting. As a result, when interventions are implemented in the practice setting, there is often a substantial decrease in effectiveness. The Minneapolis Heart Institute at Allina Health is committed to preventing and treating cardiovascular disease, which is prevalent and costly. Learn how data and analytics can help close the efficacy-effectiveness gap, and enable evaluation of emerging therapies that lead to better outcomes in the real-world practice setting, supporting informed decisions for high-cost devices and technologies.

36 – Data, Insights, Action! Little-Known Principles and Skills Needed for Making Analytics Actionable (analyst, operations)

Russ Staheli - Senior Vice President, Professional Services, Health Catalyst

Russ Staheli

Senior Vice President, Professional Services, Health Catalyst

Russ Staheli loves data. A questioner at heart, he is constantly trying to create the most informed decisions from far too much data, much to the chagrin of his wife and 5 kids. In a stroke of luck, 14 years ago he stumbled into an internship with quality improvement guru Brent James at Intermountain Healthcare where he found an endless stream of data informed decisions needing to be made. His mind would never be bored again and his marriage was saved. He joined Health Catalyst 6 years ago after gaining a deep understanding of the business of healthcare at Intermountain Healthcare and the Duke University Health System. Along this journey he received a degree in Health Services Research and a masters in Health Policy and Administration from UNC Chapel Hill. Russ currently leads Health Catalyst's Analytic Services Organization.

What critical factor guarantees your analytics will lead to actual improvements and an increased ROI? Actionability! Russ has made actionability a key indicator of success for his team of analytic professionals embedded in 40 different healthcare systems across the country. If their insights are not actionable, if they don’t achieve sustained improvements, they have failed. In this session, Russ dives into hands-on techniques for raising insight quantity, quality, clarity, and above all, actionability. Participants will learn:

How to overcome the recurring barriers to “mission accomplished”
How to avoid team time wasters by delineating between interesting and actionable
How to make analytics actively drive value and raise ROI

This session is tailored for heavy analytics consumers and leaders of analytics teams. All participants will leave the session with a set of skills and guiding principles to elevate their analytic focus from just achieving “great analytics” to truly driving value.

37 – Reducing Unwarranted Clinical Variation Saves Tens of Millions of Dollars (financial, analyst)

Matthew Brown - Finance Manager, Allina Health

Matthew Brown

Finance Manager, Allina Health

Matthew Brown is a Finance Manager at Allina Health in Minneapolis, MN. He earned his B.S. from Miami University in Oxford, OH. His department administrates the budget, rolling forecast, productivity and cost accounting data for the system. Matt and his team leverage the patient level cost accounting data to model the financial implications of care improvement processes for the systems clinical service lines. He has worked closely with the Oncology, Surgical and Value Based Care services to demonstrate financial opportunities across Allina.

Sarah Jenson - Director, Analytics, Allina Health with Health Catalyst

Sarah Jenson

Director, Analytics, Allina Health with Health Catalyst

Sarah Jenson is Director of Analytics at Allina Health and also at Health Catalyst. Sarah aspires daily to help healthcare organizations drive improvement through data. She received her Master’s in Sociology and has supported Allina Health’s analytics achievements for nearly a decade, and continued in that role after Allina Health outsourced its analytics department to Health Catalyst in 2015. By creating a process to identify unwarranted clinical variation, she and her team have identified millions of dollars in potential savings for Allina Health thought cost savings, lives saved, and quality improvements – specifically this has resulted in reductions in Spine cost of care, improvements in Stroke care delivery, and efficiencies in Sepsis treatment. Prior to her time at Allina Health, Sarah spent several years working in healthcare market research helping insurance providers and healthcare systems better understand their brand perception, gauge member onboarding processes, measure patient experiences and outcomes, identify new market opportunities, as well as aiding in other research needed to support key decisions at the highest level.

In the current healthcare environment, understanding per member per month (PMPM) cost drivers, and recognizing opportunities to optimize both reimbursement and patient outcomes, are critical to the financial viability of a healthcare organization. Integrated Health Partnerships (IHP) is an accountable care model that incentivizes healthcare providers to take on more financial accountability for the cost of care for Medicaid patients in Minnesota. Allina Health has three IHP contracts which cover approximately 90,000 members, half of which live within a three-county metro area.

Using its analytics platform made it possible for Allina Health to integrate internal and external data sources to deliver insight into PMPM cost drivers and produce a comprehensive evaluation of the drivers of PMPM payment performance. Coupling this PMPM insight with information from data-driven opportunity analysis has given Allina Health insight into its IHP patient population, supporting informed at-risk contracting and the creation of interventions to decrease the total cost of care and improve both financial and clinical outcomes.

38 – Proactive Patient and Leadership Engagement Delivers an Improved Care Experience (operations, innovation)

Tamra E. Minnier, RN, MSN, FACHE - Chief Quality Officer, UPMC

Tamra E. Minnier, RN, MSN, FACHE

Chief Quality Officer, UPMC

Tami Minnier is the Chief Quality Officer for UPMC, an integrated delivery and financing system in Pittsburgh, PA. Ms. Minnier oversees the Wolff Center which drives the quality and safety agenda at UPMC. She is the Executive Director for the Beckwith Institute, a $15 million dollar foundation supporting innovation in care delivery and shared decision making. Ms. Minnier has a passion for clinical care improvement and with the patient at the center of innovation. She has her BSN and MSN from the University of Pittsburgh; she is a fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives. Ms. Minnier has studied the Toyota Production System and Lean Manufacturing. She is a graduate of the Advanced Training Program at Intermountain Health Care and has been on faculty at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. She is the Vice-Chair of the Board of Joint Commission International/ Joint Commission Resources. She also serves as a board member of the Patient Safety Movement Foundation. A nationally known speaker, Ms. Minnier has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Newsweek, The Journal of Nursing Administration, Modern Health Care, Healthcare Leaders, Reflections by Sigma Theta Tau, and many other journals. She has been noted by Becker’s as one of the 50 top experts leading the field of patient safety and one of the top 130 women health system leaders to know. However, her proudest accomplishment is her son, Seth.

Jody Madala - Senior Product Manager, UPMC Enterprises

Jody Madala

Senior Product Manager, UPMC Enterprises

Jody Madala is a Senior Product Manager at UPMC Enterprises leading new product development, evaluating the healthcare start-up market for new investment opportunities and helping to oversee UPMC Enterprises’ venture fund investments. Prior to joining UPMC Enterprises, Jody spent over eighteen years in New York City working as a sell-side healthcare analyst at Jefferies, at Citi in investment banking, and as a rating agency analyst for FitchRatings. For her work as a credit analyst, Jody was named to Institutional Investors’ All America Fixed-Income Team in multiple years. Jody is a CFA charterholder and obtained her Master’s in Public Administration from New York University and her Bachelor of Arts degree in Biophysics from Johns Hopkins University. She is a board member of the Pittsburgh chapter of the CFA Society and a member of New Mexico CFA Society. Jody also serves as an adviser to the Santa Fe Business Incubator and as a mentor for Plug and Play, a healthcare accelerator headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area.

For many years, U.S. healthcare has focused on the volume of services rendered rather than the quality of care. As a result, patients often felt as if they lacked a voice in the process, resulting in a poor patient experience. Ignoring patient experience puts health systems in peril, given the level of today’s social media and consumer transparency. Increasingly, patients are more willing to share their experiences and readily compare healthcare provider quality outcomes and costs, especially when they are negative. UPMC, like other large, complex healthcare organizations, discovered that many times, patients’ voices were lost. To collect and analyze the necessary data to gain actionable insights for improving patients’ experiences, UPMC developed innovative technology and processes to proactively engage with patients and employees. Leaders are using this technology to engage frontline staff and patients and drive system-wide culture change. Come listen and learn about how UPMC is achieving improved patient experience and improved employee engagement.

Machine Learning Marketplace (Two-Hour Rapid Review and Face-to-Face Walkabout Session)

New this year is our first-ever, two-hour Machine Learning Marketplace. Selected from over sixty submissions, we have chosen ten innovative machine learning projects to share their approach and best practices. During the first hour, each system will present a 5 minute Rapid Review summary of their machine learning project to the entire audience. During the second hour, we will feature their projects in ten different stations where the audience walk around, select, and learn more about these projects with face-to-face interactions. The featured machine learning projects include…

Real-time inpatient care
Detecting errors in medical data (patient comorbidities)
Predicting targeted nursing turnover
Optimizing no-show rates
NLP falls analytics
Sustaining machine learning models over time
No-show patient analytics
Opioid risk prediction tool
Heart failure readmission risks, closed-loop analytics
NLP analytics from VOC surveys and social media

New this year…

If you could pick anyone’s brain, who would it be? Join the conversations that will happen on Braindate

Apply to be an Analytics Walkabout Speaker