SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR CLINICAL, OPERATIONAL, AND FINANCIAL BENCHMARKING AND COMPARATIVE ANALYTICS

• US 20110077958A1
• Filed: 09/24/2010
• Published: 03/31/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 09/24/2009
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Humedica Incorporated (UnitedHealth Group Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: Humedica Incorporated (UnitedHealth Group Incorporated)
• Inventors: Pettini, Donald, Bleicher, Paul, Breitenstein, Agneta, Scharer, Ryan, Huang, Stanley, Ye, Hua
• Application Number:
  US12/889,963
• Publication Number:
  US 20110077958A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/2
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0481 based on specific properties of the displayed interaction object or a metaphor-based environment, e.g. interaction with desktop elements like windows or icons, or assisted by a cursor's changing behaviour or appearance
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0484 for the control of specific functions or operations, e.g. selecting or manipulating an object, an image or a displayed text element, setting a parameter value or selecting a range
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/22 Social work or social welfare, e.g. community support activities or counselling services
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 10/60 for patient-specific data, e.g. for electronic patient records
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 50/30 for calculating health indices; for individual health risk assessment

Abstract

The clinical analytics platform automates the capture, extraction, and reporting of data required for certain quality measures, provides real-time clinical surveillance, clinical dashboards, tracking lists, and alerts for specific, high-priority conditions, and offers dynamic, ad-hoc quality reporting capabilities. The clinical informatics platform may include a data extraction facility that gathers clinical data from numerous sources, a data mapping facility that identifies and maps key data elements and links data over time, a data normalization facility to normalize the clinical data and, optionally, de-identify the data, a flexible data warehouse for storing raw clinical data or longitudinal patient data, a clinical analytics facility for data mining, analytic model building, patient risk identification, benchmarking, performing quality assurance, and patient tracking, and a graphical user interface for presenting clinical analytics in an actionable format. The clinical informatics platform may enable a method of benchmarking that includes analyzing the healthcare data to obtain a data sample to compare to at least one of a clinical, operational and financial benchmark, and presenting the data sample with the benchmark as a report in a graphical user interface, wherein the report can be customized by at least one of changing at least one criterion.

Claims

1. A method of comparative healthcare benchmarking, comprising:

gathering healthcare data from a plurality of sources;

processing the healthcare data, wherein processing comprises wherein processing comprises identifying, mapping and normalizing healthcare data elements,

wherein the mapping comprises assigning data to a field of a database according to a hierarchically organized lexicon of healthcare data elements, wherein multiple data element entries in the lexicon are mapped to a single field for at least one field;

analyzing the healthcare data to obtain at least one of a clinical, operational and financial benchmark;

repeating the steps of gathering, processing, normalizing, and analyzing to obtain a data sample to compare with the at least one clinical, operational, or financial benchmark, wherein at least one change is made in at least one of the repeated steps; and

presenting the data sample with the benchmark as a report in a graphical user interface, wherein the report can be customized by at least one of changing at least one criterion.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the data are gathered on a periodic basis.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the data are gathered on a real-time basis.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the real-time basis is at least as frequent as every five minutes.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of sources include sources relating to different geographic regions.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of sources include sources relating to different healthcare facilities.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of sources include sources relating to a specified geographic region.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein processing the healthcare data also comprises validating the healthcare data elements.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising linking the healthcare data elements over time to form a longitudinal data record.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the graphical user interface is presented via a software-as-a-service architecture.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one criterion is a data source, a time period, a chart type, a time interval for display, a time interval for analysis, a filter, a hospital, a physician, a patient, a patient characteristic, a cohort, a disease, a gender, an age group, a treatment, a payer type and an insurance provider.

12. A benchmarking and comparative analytics dashboard, comprising:

a clinical informatics facility, comprising;

a data extraction facility that gathers clinical data from numerous sources;

a data mapping facility that identifies and maps key data elements and links data over time, wherein the mapping comprises assigning data to a field of a database according to a hierarchically organized lexicon of healthcare data elements, wherein multiple data element entries in the lexicon are mapped to a single field for at least one field;

a data normalization facility to normalize the clinical data;

a flexible data warehouse for storing raw clinical data or longitudinal patient data; and

a clinical analytics facility for data mining and analytic model building;

a user selectable dashboard definer configured to provide user selectable options for defining the clinical analytics to be presented in a report at a dashboard; and

a display definer configured to operate in conjunction with the user selectable dashboard definer to define the format in which the clinical analytics report from the clinical informatics facility is to be presented at the dashboard.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the data are gathered on a periodic basis.

14. The method of claim 12, wherein the data are gathered on a real-time basis.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the real time basis is at least as frequent as every five minutes.

16. The method of claim 12, wherein the data normalization facility de-identifies the data.

17. The method of claim 12, further comprising validating the clinical data.

18. The method of claim 12, wherein the clinical analytics facility enables patient risk identification and patient tracking.

19. The method of claim 12, wherein the selectable options include the addition of a comparative benchmark.

20. The method of claim 12, wherein the selectable options enable comparison to at least one of another patient, healthcare provider, doctor, healthcare facility, hospital, disease, condition, gender and age group.

21. The method of claim 12, wherein the selectable options include the addition of a patient risk identification and patient tracking report relating to at least one of a patient, medical care, an outcome, a demographic, a behavioral risk factor, a disease risk factor, a procedure, a therapeutic, a utilization, a readmission, mortality, and a complication.

22. The method of claim 12, wherein the format of the report comprises at least one of a table, a chart, text, and a graph and the format is customized based on at least one of a data source, a time period, a chart type, a time interval for display, a time interval for analysis, a filter, a hospital, a physician, a patient, a patient characteristic, a cohort, a disease, a gender, an age group, a treatment, a payer type and an insurance provider.

23. The method of claim 12, wherein the dashboard is presented via a software-as-a-service architecture.