Dive into the clear blue. The pool is full of warm water molecules aggregated to suspend your body and create a swimmable fluid. This is not a puddle-jumping experience, with many small pools of water collected by chance; it is a rich immersion experience made feasible by the deliberate streaming of water into a well-defined basin. Water aggregation is a pool full of fun.
The power of the pool
Aside from swimming, purposeful aggregation can change the nature and power of an experience. The High Value Healthcare Collaborative is an example of the power of the pool. The collaborative consists of 19 healthcare organizations and the Dartmouth Institute. Collectively this group cares for over 70 million people, so it can pool huge amounts of clinical and claims data. As Chris Ross, the CIO of High Value Healthcare Collaborative-member Mayo Clinic, notes, this is a “galaxy of data.” An important aspect of this data collaboration is that it is ongoing, creating longitudinal and outcomes data, with a goal to use the data to improve both clinical quality and healthcare delivery cost.
The High Value Healthcare Collaborative began in 2010 with five founding members: Mayo Clinic, Denver Health, Intermountain Healthcare, Dartmouth-Hitchcock, and the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. These healthcare entities feature extensive primary care delivery systems. Denver Health has a public health function and Intermountain Health is known for “transforming healthcare through high quality and sustainable costs.” Mayo is the first and largest integrated, not-for-profit group practice in the world. The Dartmouth Institute, a research hub for the study of clinical practice variation and outcome variability, provides data aggregation and management for the collaborative.
Healthcare innovation
Since 2010 the High Value Healthcare Collaborative has bubbled to the current 19 participants that enrich the geographic and cultural diversity of the pooled data. Supported by a $26 million grant from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), the collaborative is doing clinical research in a modern way. Through data aggregation and analysis within the collaborative, “common and costly healthcare conditions” have been identified. Effective high-value clinical processes to manage these costly conditions have been developed through evaluating clinical and administrative data. Innovative programs and interventions have been created from these best processes. The programs are tested by the collaborative members with supporting real- or near real-time data feedback through dashboards and reports. This “research” technique involves rapid translation from data and theory to real-world care delivery and outcomes assessment.
What this means for us
Current High Value Healthcare Collaborative clinical targets include hip, knee, and spine surgery avoidance; diabetes management to avoid hospitalizations; post-sepsis management to reduce debilitation; and chronic heart failure management. In this collaborate process, clinical program development features measurement, innovation, and replication by:
- Creating advanced measures and tools to support care delivery
- Identifying Best Practice care models and payment models
- Creating a collaborative “learning” network
This research will come full circle with the public dissemination of work, findings, and practices, creating a powerful data pool and a rich immersion experience for everyone.
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