Like most CIOs of three-hospital health systems, Karen Bowling has plenty keeping her busy these days. Now there's more to do. With the mission of meeting a slew of federal mandates pretty much well in hand, it's time to help steer toward a future of accountable care.
[See also: ACOs and meaningful use to go hand in hand]
[See also: CIO: No longer just 'the IT guy']
ACOs are data-rich propositions, of course. Interestingly, another of Covenant's hospitals, St. Joseph Healthcare in Bangor, Maine, was an early leader in data exchange, sharing patient clinicals with Maine's statewide HIE, Healthinfonet, almost since its inception.
"I was part of the Bangor Beacon community project, so right from the get-go I worked with HealthInfoNet," said Bowling. In fact, 112-bed St. Joseph's was at first one of the largest users of the HIE, at least until some of the bigger hospitals in the state signed on.
So when Covenant began the employee ACO initiative, "it was comical, in a way, and as frustrating as it was comical," that there was already plenty of data moving around -- just not the right data for that particular project.
"We were already doing that: already sending the data to the ACOs, already sending the data to the HIE; there was data flowing everywhere," said Bowling.
"But there was still not one place that captures what we wanted to do with a data warehouse," she said. "So with MedeAnalytics, one thing we're working towards is, even though we’re sending some data all over, we need to put it all in one place so we can do all these different types of analyses -- and not just onesies and twosies -- for the purposes they were developed."