Three Data-Informed Ways to Drive Optimal Pediatric Care

Three Data-Informed Ways to
Drive Optimal Pediatric Care

© 2021 Health Catalyst
Proprietary. Feel free to share but we would appreciate a Health Catalyst citation.
Driving Optimal Pediatric Care
Delivering pediatric care to patients has
unique challenges, particularly during a
pandemic.
Experts still don’t know exactly how
COVID-19 impacts children, organizations
are struggling to schedule primary care
visits because the pandemic put
non-essential care on hold, and
communicating health informa-
tion to a child through a parent or
guardian can be difficult for providers.

Driving Optimal Pediatric Care
Despite the above challenges, health systems
can leverage more comprehensive data to
improve care delivery to pediatric patients
while also increasing profit margins.
Healthcare leaders and providers often
turn to outcomes data, forgetting about
other data-driven methods to improve care.
While outcomes are vital to understanding a
health system’s quality of pediatric care,
organizations can also leverage operational
data to improve care through optimizing
hospital space, improving patient scheduling,
and implementing virtual care options.

Three Data-Informed Strategies to Drive
Better Pediatric Care and Boost Revenue
The following three operational improvement
opportunities improve access to pediatric
care, allowing children to get the right care
without delay—even in a pandemic—and
allow the health system to continue treating
patients and in turn, generating revenue.
Organizations can apply three data-driven
strategies to optimize pediatric care and
increase profits:
1. Maximize Space Utilization
2. Improve Patient Scheduling
3. Implement Virtual Care

#1: Maximize Space Utilization
Pediatric patient access is a common
challenge for health systems.
In response, increased access through better
space utilization allows health systems to
promote better pediatric health, prevent
diseases among children, and reverse
harmful conditions early in their course.

Using specific data, including appointment
data from the EHR, room availability, and
optimal room utilization, allows healthcare
leaders to assess how their health system
currently uses its available space and
highlights opportunities to improve space
usage to see more patients.

This information is also valuable when health
systems are trying to treat pediatric patients
while adhering to social distancing guidelines.
This allows each floor to maximize its
space without compromising COVID-19
safety guidelines.

Texas Children’s Hospital, a not-for-profit
healthcare organization, created an
analytics application to better understand
its space needs and availability.
The space utilization data allowed leaders
to reallocate exam rooms to increase clinic
offerings.
Texas Children’s also involved pediatric
providers in the space utilization project.

That collaboration produced a feature that
allowed providers to submit requests to
use available space.
The improvements increased visibility
around room utilization and demand,
leading to approximately 550 additional
pediatric appointments.

#2: Improve Patient Scheduling
Because health systems generate revenue
when they deliver care to patients, the
more patients they schedule, the more
profits they earn.
Delayed pediatric appointments due to
cumbersome scheduling processes can
lead to lost revenue and worse health
for children.

These scheduling difficulties often stem
from a lack of standardized processes
across departments.
For example, scheduling an appointment
with a pediatric cardiologist might have a
different process than scheduling an
appointment with a pediatrician.

Health systems can overcome inconsistent
scheduling practices by first gathering data
to help them understand gaps in scheduling
processes across the system.
Needed information includes referrals,
patient wait times, and patient capacity by
department.
With insight into scheduling practices,
health systems can identify opportunities
to standardize processes to promote a
consistent pediatric patient experience.

One health system used an analytics accelerator
(e.g., the Health Catalyst Practice Management:
Patient Access) to assess patient scheduling.
Analytics insight revealed 60 different scheduling
processes and long wait times (up to eight
months in some departments).
With access to comprehensive scheduling data,
the organization standardized appointment
scheduling systemwide, adding more than
53,000 pediatric appointments annually and
increasing revenue by $8.3 million.

#3: Implement Virtual Care
COVID-19 pressured health systems to
find new ways to deliver care to children.
For many organizations, this meant
turning to technology.
The telehealth challenges (e.g.,
infrastructure and technology setup)
were magnified in pediatric care
because children need approval from
their parent or guardian to participate
in a virtual visit, and most likely need
help starting the visit, depending on
the child’s age.

However, with relevant data, healthcare
leaders could understand telehealth’s
effectiveness and continue to deliver
care to pediatric patients.
Telehealth data, including daily visit
volume, visit type (e.g., telephone or
video) by service line, and the number
of available and scheduled visits each
day, allows leaders to assess the
success of virtual care programs and
adapt them as needed.

One health system addressed these telehealth
growing pains with access to department-level
data about pediatric patient needs and volume.
With comprehensive data, the organization
compared patient visits before and after
telehealth to see where it needed to implement
virtual care options to increase access.
The team used this insight to implement pediatric
workflow changes and add a dedicated COVID-
19 nurse triage line.

The COVID-19-specific line freed department
scheduling resources to focus on setting up
virtual visits instead of answering COVID-19-
related questions.
Using data to implement virtual care allowed
the organization to maintain pre-COVID-19
patient visit volumes and offer pediatric virtual
care across 64 specialties.

Data-Informed Care Decisions Deliver Optimal
Pediatric Care and Financial Sustainability
Health systems are under pressure to
deliver the best care to kids, no matter
the circumstances (e.g., a pandemic).
Delivering high-quality pediatric care is
possible despite challenges if health
systems and care teams have
supporting data.

Data-Informed Care Decisions Deliver Optimal
Pediatric Care and Financial Sustainability
This analytics insight reveals opportunities
for leaders to implement operational
tactics—maximizing space, improving
scheduling, and implementing virtual
care—to reach their pediatric populations
and continue generating profits.

For more information:
“This book is a fantastic piece of work”
– Robert Lindeman MD, FAAP, Chief Physician Quality Officer

More about this topic
Link to original article for a more in-depth discussion.
Three Data-Informed Ways to Drive Optimal Pediatric Care
Three Strategies to Deliver Patient-Centered Care in the Next Normal
Health Catalyst Editors
Shifting to Value-Based Care: Four Strategies Emphasize Agility
The Key to Better Healthcare Decision Making
Why Data-Driven Healthcare Is the Best Defense Against COVID-19
Healthcare Process Improvement: Six Strategies for Organizationwide Transformation

Other Clinical Quality Improvement Resources
Click to read additional information at www.healthcatalyst.com
Health Catalyst is a mission-driven data warehousing, analytics and outcomes-improvement
company that helps healthcare organizations of all sizes improve clinical, financial, and operational
outcomes needed to improve population health and accountable care. Our proven enterprise data
warehouse (EDW) and analytics platform helps improve quality, add efficiency and lower costs in
support of more than 65 million patients for organizations ranging from the largest US health system
to forward-thinking physician practices.
Health Catalyst was recently named as the leader in the enterprise healthcare BI market in
improvement by KLAS, and has received numerous best-place-to work awards including Modern
Healthcare in 2013, 2014, and 2015, as well as other recognitions such as “Best Place to work for
Millenials, and a “Best Perks for Women.”

Three Data-Informed Ways to Drive Optimal Pediatric Care

Recommandé

Recommandé

Contenu connexe

Tendances

Tendances (20)

Similaire à Three Data-Informed Ways to Drive Optimal Pediatric Care

Similaire à Three Data-Informed Ways to Drive Optimal Pediatric Care (20)

Plus de Health Catalyst

Plus de Health Catalyst (20)

Dernier

Dernier (18)

Three Data-Informed Ways to Drive Optimal Pediatric Care