Custom Solutions
Creative Data Solutions Lead to Better Strategies
Business issues: In today's environment, hospitals must respond quickly to a variety of issues. Too often, that creates conflicting priorities that harried administrators may not be able to properly address. Solucient® can assemble expert project teams to help you find answers. Custom Solutions consultants can help you address:
- How can we use market trends to quickly identify high-priority markets?
- How can we clarify clinical improvement opportunities and assess their impact on quality?
- How can we convert a large amount of data into meaningful information that helps guide senior executives' decision-making?
Facilitate change: Solucient's Custom Solutions team has the information and expertise to analyze your market from multiple and unique perspectives. We can provide the specific information you require for strategic planning, clinical benchmarks and market strategy development. Look to Solucient's Custom Solutions for:
- Market assessment - With our detailed market and competitive information, you gain a solid understanding of your hospital demographics, community need, inpatient and outpatient utilization, hospital market share and profitability by service line. To complete the picture, we'll provide financial and clinical analyses of your competitors.
- Clinical comparisons - In addition, we can add risk and severity
adjustments to your data so that you can compare your results with local,
national or 100 Top Hospitals® benchmarks. We can, in short, create benchmarks
that are specific to your facility and your requirements.
- Patient safety outcomes measurement - Solucient can provide an analysis comparing your facility's performance to state, national and peer group benchmarks using the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Inpatient Quality Indicators and Patient Safety Indicators.
- Benchmarking - With Solucient's creative input, extensive data, and necessary benchmarks, you can develop a balanced scorecard for your institution. We can provide a range of clinical, financial and market benchmarks for comparison with those of similar organizations on a monthly or quarterly basis.
Focus on success:
Unlike other companies that report only publicly available hospital data from federal and state information sources, Solucient's data warehouse also includes proprietary data from our 3,300 hospital clients. Custom benchmarks combined with your risk-adjusted data permit a multitude of analysis options, all designed to give you the insights you need to meet specific goals.
Solucient Custom Solutions consultants can answer any questions you may
have from the provider, payer and pharmaceutical perspective. The expertise
of our consultants and our vast information base means we are experts in
the healthcare market.
See results: Comprehensive data is only the first step to understanding and analyzing your business issues. We take pride in the results-oriented solutions we offer our clients and in the relationships we build with each and every one of them. Our results speak for themselves:
Insight: Letting the data tell the real story
A manufacturer of compression stockings and sleeves had a theory about why sales had slumped. The story from hospital clients was that their surgeons had been able to greatly reduce the surgical complications of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism and therefore no longer needed as many compression devices to prevent these side effects. Yet the manufacturer knew from Medicare data that diagnoses of DVT and pulmonary embolism had not declined. Since the hospital length of stay was also shorter for these patients, was it possible they were developing complications from surgery once they were discharged? The manufacturer asked
Solucient to find out.
By analyzing patient claims data for 30 days after discharge, Solucient discovered that the rate of DVT and pulmonary embolism in these patients changed very little. Instead, they were being diagnosed with these complications at physicians' offices, the ER, rehabilitation centers and skilled nursing facilities after they left the hospital.
Confident that this theory was correct, the manufacturer was able to show the surgeons that shorter hospital stays were masking the true complication rates. The data were so compelling that the surgeons changed their procedure protocols to require the use of the manufacturer's compression sleeves and stockings, which resulted in higher sales for the manufacturer and improved patient outcomes.
Insight: Benchmarking reports identify areas for improvement
When VHA West Coast member hospitals and health systems need to know how their performance in high-volume DRGs compares to that of their sister organizations, the information they require is at their fingertips.
VHA West Coast is an alliance of providers throughout the West and Hawaii. For five years, VHA West Coast headquarters in Pleasanton, Calif., has shared Solucient DRG length of stay (LOS) and DRG Pair Analysis reports with its members. As a result, VHA member organizations have a relevant benchmark that allows them to find achievable best practices within their alliance.
In addition, the reports help strengthen inter-alliance ties. "We go to the individual hospitals to discuss the reports and talk about the financial and quality implications they contain," says Alan Rosenstein, VHA vice president and medical director. "That not only helps the hospitals, it helps us build solid relationships with all our members."
Solucient focuses the reports on areas where change would be likely to have the greatest effect. The analyses compare selected hospital outcomes to appropriate benchmarks to provide cost-effective, genuine insights into LOS reduction initiatives, potential revenue loss due to coding and potential risks caused by improper coding.
As a result, member hospitals have focused their efforts on changes in clinical pathways, case management and discharge planning programs, and performance improvement activities. They also have improved coding practices and chart documentation to improve performance.
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