Compass Medical Leverages Big Data to Transform Chronic Disease Management

In recent years, big data has been increasingly widely applied in the retail, manufacturing, and technology industries, offering unprecedented new perspectives. Whether through sophisticated and granular data analytics platforms, reporting tools, or applications, a variety of insights can be extracted from big data on a daily basis.

However, highly mature applications of big data in the healthcare industry remain scarce, a gap that is particularly evident in the management of chronic diseases. According to CDC statistics, spending on chronic diseases accounts for 86% of total healthcare expenditures. VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) will introduce a company calledCompass Medical: Chronic Disease + Big DataHealthcare institutions, let’s examine the new technologies and operational models of this enterprise.

Despite the widespread adoption of electronic health records (EHRs), most healthcare institutions remain unable to extract critical health information from them. This lack of high-quality data capture capability hinders effective analysis, severely impedes productivity gains in the healthcare sector, and suppresses the potential for improving long-term care outcomes.

Unlike personal finance management and social networking, although medical IT applications have proliferated, deriving healthcare industry insights from big data remains highly challenging. Electronic medical records represent a positive attempt, but the situation has not fundamentally changed as a result.

As healthcare reimbursement shifts from a fee-for-service model to value-based care, population health issues are receiving increasing attention. It is time for healthcare institutions to adopt substantive new approaches to chronic disease management. Compass Medical, a U.S.-based healthcare organization, has already begun implementing various innovative strategies in this area, particularly through its adoption of big data, setting an industry benchmark.

Compass Medical is part of the Steward Health Care system, a network of community-based care facilities and community hospitals with more than 17,000 employees., treating over 1 million patients annually in Massachusetts. Leveraging the extensive scale of the Steward Health Care system, Compass Medical patients can access high-quality medical services characteristic of advanced community hospitals.

“Regarding Compass Medical’s chronic disease care strategy, we have numerous multidisciplinary research teams dedicated to system optimization and the improvement of medical processes, while identifying management structures suited to various healthcare programs,” said Andrew Koslow, Vice President of Operations and Chief Medical Advisor at Compass Medical. “At the same time, we continue to adhere to proven principles of population health and care management, such as ‘identification and targeting,’ ‘stratification of care priorities,’ and ‘engagement and personalized care planning.’”

In many chronic conditions, the goals of clinical management for patients are well-defined. For instance, patients with diabetes need to undergo hemoglobin A1c testing twice a year and keep it below 9.0%. Their blood pressure also requires frequent monitoring and should be controlled below 140/90 mmHg. Additionally, annual eye and kidney examinations are necessary to monitor for early signs of organ damage.

“We have forChronic diseases such as diabetes require the development and deployment of specialized clinical management reporting mechanisms, integrating them into clinical and administrative workflows.“, monitor whether patients’ clinical signs meet the standards, and provide clinical management reports when necessary,” said Dhrumil Shah, Chief Information Officer of Compass Medical.

It is evident from Compass Medical’s chronic disease management strategy that care management and the transition to team-based service delivery are critical components of population health strategies. The data-driven tools employed by Compass Medical over the years have provided valuable medical insights, offering a broader perspective on patient care.

“Over the past few years, we have begun researching and gradually implementing big data frameworks, while also navigating numerous organizational and developmental challenges, among whichThe most formidable challenge is the lack of sufficient resources for large-scale infrastructure development.“, leaving us with no clear starting point for the problems we aimed to solve.” Dhrumil Shah spoke of the hardships involved in the transformation process.

“In many cases, we clearly understand our areas of expertise, but these insights often lack support from scientific theories. Therefore, when focusing on analytical work, we prioritize adopting a data-driven approach to address aspects that urgently require improvement.”

Compass Medical’s core mission is to enhance the patient care experience by leveraging improvements in healthcare institutions’ operational expertise. Its development approach begins with identifying and analyzing established problems, followed by testing any models that align with clinical workflows based on the analysis.

In the summer of 2016, Compass Medical launched a chronic disease care management program across many of its clinical facilities, engaging numerous patients suffering from two or more chronic conditions. Leveraging its electronic health records and big data platform, Compass Medical achievedAutomation of Many Nursing Workflows。

Dhrumil Shah stated, “Many nurses view electronic health records as a stumbling block in the care workflow. Therefore, we developed data-driven metrics to study how much time they spend in front of computer screens over a 24-hour period, and then employed interventions and analytics to design pilot programs. The results have been highly encouraging, with some pilots achieving a substantial return on investment within just three weeks, while others are expected to deliver high returns within six months to a year.”

It is evident that big data has played a significant role in the operations of Compass Medical, and this process itself constitutes the establishment of a big data framework.

“Like many other healthcare institutions, we also have multiple disparate information systems. Even though we use only one electronic health record (EHR) system, we still maintain separate financial management and care coordination systems. These independent information systems create distinct databases. Our goal is to become a population health service organization, and big data will lend us a helping hand when we seek to understand the potential outcomes of our decisions.” Shah repeatedly affirmed the role of big data.

“Advancements gained through big data have enhanced remote interactions with patients, which lies at the core of our strategy,” stated Andrew Koslow. “We also place significant emphasis on personalized care plans for patients with chronic conditions, integrating individual patient expectations with long-term clinical goals in population health management. These efforts are becoming our unique competitive advantage.”We can now leverage the transitional care service model and gradually establish a team-based healthcare delivery model., enabling nurses to overcome communication barriers.”

Next, Compass Medical will embark on the development of more sophisticated relational databases, aiming to betterAssess Patient Adherence to Clinical Management Recommendations, and further improve the patient experience through the redesign of clinical activities. Compass Medical has effectively transformed big data into actionable assets, creating opportunities to address complex healthcare challenges at both the population and individual patient levels.

For consumers, big data in healthcare may sound like mere hype, as our daily use is often limited to metrics such as step counts and calorie intake. However, consider the case of a patient with diabetes who needs to measure blood glucose levels daily; a single individual can generate hundreds of data points annually. These data hold the potential to provide unique medical insights, enabling tangible improvements in patients’ quality of life and treatment outcomes, ranging from modifications in daily behaviors to the formulation of therapeutic regimens.

There are currently 29 million patients with diabetes in the United States, and more than 420 million worldwide. The volume of data is growing exponentially. If these data can be effectively organized and analyzed, they can provide substantial evidence for research on chronic diseases, treatment strategies, and the development of novel digital therapeutics. Similarly, this approach can be applied to other chronic conditions.

Shah stated, “We are still actively developing and deploying care management and population health management platforms, leveraging data science and clinical science to continuously enhance patient engagement and clinical outcomes, thereby creating a model with scalable potential. Meanwhile, we are also actively refining the functionalities of our patient mobile engagement platform to maximize its utility, and will”Integrating Valuable Healthcare Data Insights with Clinical Workflows。”

References:

1.https://medcitynews.com/2017/08/five-big-data-solutions-manage-chronic-diseases/?rf=1

2.http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/compass-medical-taps-big-data-transform-care-delivery

3.http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/where-chronic-care-management-and-population-health-meet