The VHAN Analytics Team works closely with VHAN’s operational and clinical team members to gather and examine data to define and solve problems. Over the last year, the team has been instrumental in supporting key VHAN initiatives, such as improving annual wellness visit completion, coding and documentation processes, and cancer screening rates.
To ensure VHAN focuses on aims that will have the greatest impact on the network’s cost and quality goals, the analytics team worked closely with VHAN stakeholders to set targets, identify important metrics and reporting criteria, and keep a close eye on the network’s progress.
“This year we’ve put the basic building blocks in place in terms of reporting and goal setting,” says Spencer Essenpreis, Director, VHAN Analytics. “With each of the executive aims, a big part of the work has been identifying which metrics we’re going to use and how to set targets for what we’re going to achieve.”
Analytics Managers Daniel Topping and Nicole Cody also created an analytics reporting structure and centralized Executive Dashboard that displays VHAN’s top KPIs. The multi-level dashboard centralizes VHAN’s most critical KPIs with links out to related in-depth dashboards, allowing our VHAN staff to identify and dig deeper into vital trends.
Looking Ahead
With executive aims projects under way, the team is now focused on some long-term goals, including using data to show how VHAN’s emphasis on coordinated care is making a difference for patients.
The analytics team’s work is highly collaborative with that of VHAN’s clinical and operational teams, Essenpreis says. “We rely on their clinical and operational expertise combined with our team’s data analytics expertise to complete analyses that will have the best possible impact for VHAN. For example, Analytics Consultant Jake Fletcher completed an association analysis to identify chronic conditions that were likely to be highly correlated with one another. The Care Management team is then able to use their clinical knowledge to apply this information as they engage patients.
Senior Analytics Consultant Rachael Peters is also part of shaping a new social determinants of health aim. Essenpreis is excited that Peters can be involved at the outset since this allows the team to have a more-informed voice in projects that advance this aim.
“It’s best to start with a hypothesis of what we’re going to do, and then test that with data to see if we’re correct,” Essenpreis says. “Everybody ‘knew’ that social determinants would impact cancer screening rates, but Peters did a correlative study to see if that’s a real correlation and not an assumption. We always want to back up our theories with data.”
Occasionally, hypotheses don’t stand up to the research. Principal Analytics Consultant Russell Brothers recently investigated a theory that remote work would have an impact on in-network care. The thought was that people would travel to visit family members or work from new locations, and they would seek care in places outside of VHAN’s reach. He discovered that remote work has had very little impact, if any, on in-network care.
Moving the Needle
One of the analytics team’s early wins came when its MSSP Analytics Consultants, led by Topping, worked with the MSSP group to determine which clinical area could have the biggest affect on patient care. The data revealed Annual Wellness Visits (AWVs) were correlated with many positive outcomes, leading the MSSP group to focus on promoting AWVs as a key strategy in the early days of our VHAN ACOs.
“Our work wouldn’t be what it is without the partnership of VHAN’s operations and clinical teams to help define the problems we’re studying and interpret the data that’s out there,” Essenpreis says. “Being able to use that data and make a difference in the network is incredible.”