Deployment of Analytics into the Healthcare Safety Net: Lessons Learned & Unlearned

Abstract

In October of 2013, I made a proposal to the RCHN Community Health Foundation to start a project that would deploy a contemporary analytic software capability into community health centers that volunteered for the project & to work with their IT & executive staffs so that the capability could be productively used as part of how the health center made strategic decisions . I wrote at the time: “Everyone agrees that “analytics” are/will be important for community health centers as they evolve to new organizational (participants HIEs, ACOs, HCCNs etc.) & sustainability (service providers, data providers) models. What this means & how to do it are hotly discussed topics, however, with no apparent tactic or strategy that seems feasible. There is no big bang in this effort. This capability will not spring forth complete & productive if health centers make the correct invocation or even spend a large amount of money. This memo specifies a program that would pilot an actual path for health centers (& other healthcare organizations with limited resources) to follow to begin to productively use analytics & to evolve a more & more effective capability in this area.” I also wrote that: “Complex analytics, multi-layered analytics and highly designed data warehouses are not necessary, and moreover, not appropriate if the questions that are asked aren’t relevant or don’t require them and the underlying data isn’t complete and reliable." That was just over two years ago. What happened with the project & what is going on with it now? What lessons have been learned? What lessons did we already know but needed to have reinforced by painful experience? Here is a project update.