Coming soon…. Breakout sessions using data to address the following topics:

• Reducing superusers
• Physician wellness
• Innovative healthcare incubators
• Analyst best practices
• Predictive analytics solving ED patient flow
• Patient safety analytics
• Improving the patient and employee experience using an innovative quality improvement analytics tool

Using Rapid Response Analytics to Solve Strategic Challenges

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.

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Leveraging Predictive Models to Reduce Readmissions

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.

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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.

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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.

Improving Risk Adjustment Coding Accuracy with Analytics

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 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.

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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.

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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.

Addressing the Number One Issue CEOs Face Today

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.

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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.

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Integrating Clinical Improvement and Activity Based Costing Identifies Pathway to Healthier Moms and Babies

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.  

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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.

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Real Quality: A Recipe for Healthier Patients and Happier Doctors

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.

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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.

Living in the Era of Big Data, Algorithms, and Inefficient Health Care: Stories from the Frontlines of Health Data Science

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

Shaun J. Grannis, MD, MS, FACMI

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

Dr. Shaun Grannis, MD MS 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.

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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 has never been more promising. However, care must be taken to uncover and understand the capabilities and limitations of these resources. Electronic data is rife with biases and other data quality issues; machine learning and other classes of algorithms, when improperly applied, can produce spurious findings; and ultimately, humans who consume the fruits of these rapidly emerging amalgamations of “data plus algorithms” may be limited in their capacity to apply these findings. Dr. Grannis will share outcomes and lessons learned from recent projects leveraging “data plus algorithm” using unparalleled data from one of the country’s largest and longest-tenured health information exchanges. He will also highlight important future directions in the health data science field.

Using Machine Learning and Big Data to Drive Patient Engagement and Better Health Outcomes

Doug Melton, PhD, MPH - Analytics Business Leader, Customer Engagement & Experience, Cigna Corporation

Doug Melton, PhD, MPH

Analytics Business Leader, Customer Engagement & Experience, Cigna Corporation

Doug Melton is the Analytics Business Leader for Cigna’s Customer Engagement & Experience Vertical, which contributes to optimizing customer experience and creating value-generating customer engagement in support of Cigna's Marketing, Service Operations and Health Engagement teams. He leads the development and production of healthcare-related analytics, and identifyes opportunities for constant improvement of products and services. His team supports the business by providing expertise in:

• Behavioral Economics, to increase the likelihood of customers taking ownership of their health
• Predictive Modeling, to prevent unfavorable events that will improve customer journey
• Measurement, of provider quality and associated patient health outcomes, and
• Credible evaluation of programs and services through experimental design.

Mr. Melton’s experience and insights are vital to Cigna as it works with clients to align the right sets of benefits, local provider networks and incentives to encourage their employees to make value-based healthcare shopping decisions and become more involved in their health. He applies a critical lens to ensure the appropriate evaluation methodologies are applied to understand the effectiveness of such interventions. Mr. Melton has authored and co-authored peer-reviewed publications and white papers with Clients, which have been published in the American Journal of Managed Care, Journal of Clinical Oncology, and Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. He has recently spoken on the topic of behavioral economics at NBGH, National Academy Health, and International City/County Managers Associations. Doug earned a Ph.D. in Health Policy from UNC Chapel Hill with a focus on Health Insurance Economics. While at UNC Doug also studied and co-authored research at Duke Medical Center/Durham VA that focused on cancel quality outcomes for related colon polyps. Doug also holds an MPS and B.S. from UNC-Greensboro and UNC-Chapel Hill respectively.

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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.

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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.

Using a Real-Time Data Science Platform to Drive Perioperative Quality and Efficiency

Kalyani Velagapudi, PhD - Co-founder and President, Perimatics

Kalyani Velagapudi, PhD

Co-founder and President, Perimatics

Dr. Kalyani Velagapudi is the founder of Winigent, a successful consulting firm specializing in Advanced Analytics and Data Science. Winigent serves many large enterprises including University of Washington Medical Center, Microsoft, and State of Washington among others. She is the co-founder of Perimatics, a healthcare spin-off from Winigent and CoMotion of the University of Washington. Perimatics launched with the goal of leveraging data science to lower the costs, increase the quality of care, and improve perioperative care outcomes. Before starting Winigent, Kalyani has 25+ years of technical industry experience spread across healthcare, telecom and software industries.  She has unique expertise in implementing different enterprise-wide systems like EMR at Virginia Mason Medical Center, Oracle Financials at AT&T wireless and SAP at T-Mobile and Microsoft. Some of the senior leadership roles she held were Operations Management, IT cost reduction, Operations Process Automation, server simplification, monitoring key systems and TCO reduction. Kalyani led highly impactful leadership roles like creating and managing Microsoft partner management program, driving MSIT organization strategy and business alignment. Kalyani’s education and work experience gave her a deep understanding of how to utilize technology as a medium to positively disrupt, innovate and accelerate growth for specific industry verticals like healthcare. Kalyani earned her PhD in health economics with a specialization in hospital cost optimization from Wayne State University. She is currently serving as a board member of University of Washington Information School. She is a strong believer in data-driven decisions and using Machine Learning based predictions to solve patient care issues along with reducing the cost in the healthcare system. She lives with her husband and two sons and an adorable yellow lab in their home in Woodinville, a suburb of Seattle.

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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.

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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.

Empowering Citizens, Providers, and Communities to Achieve Optimal 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.

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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, travel, cooking, hiking or hitting up a spin class (or 5!).

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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.

Standardizing the Collection of Social and Economic Risk Data

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.

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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.

Analysts Surf the Tsunami of Healthcare Data

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.

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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.

Privacy Analytics: Using AI to Stop Data Breaches

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.

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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

Building a Modern Healthcare Data Platform

Julius Bogdan - Director of Analytics and Data Innovation, SCL Health

Julius Bogdan

Director of Analytics and Data Innovation, SCL Health

Julius Bogdan is the Director of Analytics and Data Innovation at SCL Health where he built an organization from scratch to architect and implement a modern healthcare data strategy and platform.  He believes that the power to drive innovation comes from the symbiotic relationship between business and technology and has the credentials, experience and vision to bring it to life.  After a successful career at Microsoft, Julius became personally interested in the human benefit of technology to improve healthcare management.  His mission is to build a culture of trust and shared interest in data and technology’s role in improving clinical and financial outcomes, and to increase the capacity for making data-driven decisions in healthcare.  Julius presents at conferences all over the world about utilizing modern architectures and design paradigms focusing on data’s role in validating strategic decisions in Healthcare.

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With digitization through the advent of the EMR and other systems, healthcare has become an extremely data-rich environment. Historically we have relied on a multitude of disjointed vendors to supply rudimentary analytics on our data. How do you integrate all of your systems (EMR, ERP, Time and Attendance, SaaS providers, etc.) into a platform that really enables analytics and so much more? Learn how to leverage a modern data platform in healthcare to shift the focus from transnational systems and applications to a patient, outcomes, or population focus.

The Data Maze Game: Navigating the complexities of data governance

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

Thomas D. Burton

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.

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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.

Stanford Health Care’s Data-Driven Strategy to Improve Capacity

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.

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Finding cost-effective ways to increase capacity is a perennial need for high-volume healthcare facilities nationwide.  This case study provides a unique example of how an academic hospital can leverage data and analytics to increase capacity without the costly and time-consuming process of adding bricks and mortar. Stanford Health Care used data and predictive analytics to optimize processes and solve its capacity issues.  As a result of the process changes, the efficiency and capacity of the emergency department and inpatient beds has improved, and the number of canceled cases has been significantly reduced. This session will address three scenarios that include a daily dashboard, a 24/48-hour discharge prediction, and an annual patient flow model that has helped the organization develop operational countermeasures to improve capacity.

Predictive Analytics: Making Patients Safer Through Event Reporting and Prediction

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.

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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.

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More than 21% of people in the US report experiencing a medical error in their own care, and 33% report an error in the medical care of a relative or friend.  With the effectiveness of artificial intelligence and predictive analytics growing in multiple industries, it is time to put it to work to make patients safe. Allina Health is determined to improve the safety of the patients cared for at its facilities by learning from past adverse events, identifying and addressing root causes, and automating the identification of triggers to indicate when a patient is in potential harm, or if harm may have occurred.     Allina is on the path to automate patient safety surveillance through the use of triggers and apply this knowledge to develop algorithms embedded in the workflow of clinicians to warn them of potential harm in a way that allows them to intervene before harm occurs.  In this session, Allina will share how it has effectively used this approach with three different patient safety challenges.

Reducing Unwarranted Clinical Variation Saves Tens of Millions of Dollars

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.

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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.

Data: Your Most Strategic Asset in the Healthcare Evolution

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.

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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.

Proactive Patient and Leadership Engagement Delivers an Improved Care Experience

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.

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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.

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Adding Capacity Without Construction: A Collaboration of Analytics and Frontline Operations

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.

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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.

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Detecting, Monitoring, and Preventing Patient Safety Events

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.

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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.

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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