Performance Improvement with Data Analytics: Intermountain Healthcare - Essay Example

'Performance Improvement with Data Analytics: Intermountain Healthcare' is a wonderful example of a paper on the health system.
The characteristics that make Intermountain Healthcare an integrated healthcare delivery system is the fact that it offers hospital services and runs a health insurance arm. This outlay makes it possible for Intermountain Healthcare to provide both hospital services and healthcare financing.

The membership of development teams came from “a group of knowledge experts” who were usually specialists drawn from different regions (Bohmer and Romney 2). However, the members of the main development team were those involved in frontline activities needed to make the initiatives work on a day-to-day basis. The main objective of a development team was to “focus on a particular clinical process” (Bohmer and Romney 2). The development teams achieved this by developing a Critical Process Model (CPM), which was “a suite of clinical care management tools” (Bohmer and Romney 2). The role of the guidance council was to ensure that the initiatives that the team's development underwent implementation.  

There is a strong case for a 90% overall metric for Compliance. The main reason why it is desirable is that it leaves space for improvement and innovation. It also makes the target psychologically achievable. In many places, achieving a result of 100% is virtually impossible. Ninety percent makes the target appear achievable. The caution to observe is to ensure that it does not let the participants feel that they can get away with putting in less than 100%. In this sense, there are components within which anything less than 100% is unacceptable, while there are those that do not present any serious difficulties if the results fall short of the target. The idea is to maintain the motivation of the team at high levels without compromising on key aspects of healthcare delivery.

There were two key challenges that characterized the relationship between Intermountain and their non-employee physicians. First, Intermountain used two different sets of measures to motivate the two categories of physicians. The result was that the non-employee physicians felt left out of the loop and had negative feelings regarding Intermountain. The second challenge came from the lack of access to information by the non-employee physicians. Intermountain sorted this out by availing information to the non-employee physicians.

The biggest challenge that hospitals in New Jersey could face because of having a high number of non-employee physicians is that they may fail to attain sustainability in the measures implemented because non-employee physicians do not have an organizational commitment to the hospitals. They simply provide a service as professionals and therefore they may not find other initiatives such as performance improvement initiatives attractive.

Improving clinical performance reduces the opportunities for Medicare reimbursement for costs incurred in treating certain infections. This reduces the overall income for a health facility. This is why performance improvement punishes Intermountain. The implication of this situation is that other healthcare providers may lack the incentive to implement performance improvement programs because it may lead to loss of revenue.

There are several options available for Intermountain to ensure a good financial standing using data analytics. Data analytics allows for the uncovering of many potential patterns based on the data-rich processes that mediate healthcare (Raghupathi 213). Two of these options identified by Burke include “improving organizational performance” and “lowering healthcare costs” (168). Improvement of organizational performance rests on improving efficiency in order to assure profitability. By using data analytics, it is possible to present information to physicians in a way that improves their ability to use it without requiring them to possess the technical skills required for data analytics (Glandon 235). Lowering healthcare costs means that Intermountain, using data analytics, may find ways of reducing the cost of providing healthcare by finding ways of reducing the cost of offering its services. In this case, the issue is to look for opportunities for “cost avoidance, active cost management, and improvements in efficiency” (Burke 168).