Catholic Health Initiatives and Encore Health Resources Partner to Launch Performance-Improvement Model Driven by Data

Catholic Health Initiatives and Encore Health Resources Partner to Launch Performance-Improvement Model Driven by Data

<0> Encore Health ResourcesGina Jesberg, 203-445-1545Director of CommunicationsMobile: 203-545-3186 </0>

(CHI), one of the nation’s largest nonprofit health systems, and , an award-winning health-information technology services company, will partner to create a comprehensive set of tools to transform data generated by federally mandated electronic health records (EHRs) into practical solutions to manage patient populations, quality, and costs. The solutions suite will provide a unified approach to healthcare intelligence focused on quality, performance, and risk analytics. CHI and Encore will leverage the new solutions suite to optimize CHI’s Program, a $2 billion, enterprise-wide initiative to advance patient care through the power of information.

CHI and Encore have formed their partnership at a time when demands posed by EHR meaningful-use incentive programs represent major challenges to all health systems. As volume-based reimbursement programs give way to value-based care and reimbursement models focused on improving population health, new risk-bearing entities are aligning hospitals, physician practices, and other care sites to manage defined populations.

Encore is building and testing its new suite of electronic healthcare intelligence solutions to provide CHI with the information it needs to analyze performance and quality and to successfully manage patient populations. CHI will use Encore’s solutions suite to achieve the goals of its Program, a shared electronic, universal health record for each CHI patient. CHI will implement its EHR nationwide in more than 70 ambulatory and acute-care facilities, 350 physician practices, and 11 Oncology practices.

“CHI’s Program is the largest of its kind in our history, and will create a powerful, information-based system that will significantly improve the way we care for our patients nationwide,” said Evon Holladay, MBA, Vice President, Business Intelligence, Catholic Health Initiatives. “Our partnership with Encore will extend the power of to provide ‘in-time’ information that will help CHI understand how we are performing against our goals. This capability is more important than ever as we move into a fee-for-value era.”

The CHI-Encore team is currently designing, developing, and testing a solution for use by CHI in supporting the calculation and reporting of eMeasures for successful participation in the CMS EHR Incentive Program. It will track each clinical quality measure, producing reports and dashboards to assist in assessing EHR usage against incentives-program requirements to drive continuous performance improvement. Encore is supporting CHI’s efforts to attain CMS/ONC certification for calculation and reporting of Meaningful Use eMeasures.

After Meaningful Use goals are achieved, the team will focus efforts on development of a solution to capture and harness the data generated by CHI’s EHR to create an extendible solution platform for future quality measure programs, including accountable care readiness, clinical integration networking, patient-centered medical-home management, and value-based purchasing initiatives.

“We believe that the best solutions are created on real-world projects that address actual client issues, rather than based on theories and built in boardrooms,” said Dana Sellers, Chief Executive Officer of Encore Health Resources. “Encore’s partnership with CHI will help them meet contractual commitments for care quality and cost reduction and successfully shift to a fee-for-value reimbursement model. The solutions developed as part of this project will be road-tested and ready to deploy for other clients as early as Q1 2013.”

Catholic Health Initiatives is a national nonprofit health system with headquarters in Englewood, Colo. The faith-based system operates in 19 states and includes 81 hospitals; 40 long-term care, assisted- and residential-living facilities; two community health-services organizations; two accredited nursing colleges; and home health agencies. In fiscal year 2012, CHI provided more than $715 million in charity care and community benefit, including services for the poor, free clinics, education and research. With total annual revenues of more than $10.7 billion and approximately 86,000 employees, CHI ranks as the nation’s second-largest faith-based health system.

Encore Health Resources, founded by healthcare veterans Ivo Nelson and Dana Sellers, provides information technology consulting services and solutions to assist healthcare organizations with a wide range of strategy, advisory, implementation, process-redesign, and optimization activities. Encore focuses on capturing data and establishing the analytical capabilities to meet the evolving information and reporting needs for healthcare providers to improve and document clinical and operational performance. For more information about Encore, please visit .