Deep Dive Analytics

Your radiology practice is under pressure like never before. The moving target that is healthcare reform means that hospital-based radiologists need more than a coding and billing vendor. If achieving patient care quality measures, improving physician productivity, and maximizing practice reimbursements are on your mind, HAP’s clinical analytics services should be on your list.

We call our solution Deep Dive Analytics. You’ll call it a game-changer that drives true care coordination. You’ll also find it’s a powerful proof-of-practice-value with your health system partners.

What is healthcare data analytics worth to your practice if the output is not actionable?

That’s the question we answered on day-one when developing Deep Dive Analytics. No vaporware here. No dump-and-run software either. We crushed the cliché of healthcare data analytics and created a real-world, real-time solution for radiology practices that want to do more, and do it better. Here’s what Deep Dive Analytics delivers …

Integrated Incidental Findings & Follow-up Process

Patients with incidental findings are too often falling through the cracks. Lung nodules are the prime example – and the first challenge we tackled. According to a study published by the JACR, 71% of patients with incidental lung nodule findings do not return for follow-up screening.

Our client, a hospital-based radiology group located near Philadelphia, PA, recognized this issue as a true opportunity to benefit patients and advance the quality improvement goals at the core of the value-based care concept. Working closely with their team, HAP developed a custom application and business process that:

mines radiology clinical data available in standard formats,
identifies patients with lung nodules in need of follow-up with a high degree of accuracy via condition-specific algorithms,
notifies them, and their primary care physicians via mail, to communicate the presence of the nodule and recommend follow-up screening at the appropriate time, and
measures process efficacy via executed follow-up screenings

Our customizable solution has expanded to cover all of these patient populations:

Lung nodules
Implanted IVC filters
Adrenal, liver, kidney, pancreas, and thyroid profiles

Where most software-centric healthcare data services drop the ball, we run with it — right to the goal line. Even the most insightful data is worthless if left unused. The problem is having the resources to do something about it. That’s why our integrated solution combines clinical data analytics with an automated business process. That means, we not only accurately identify more cases in need of follow-up, we also execute the mailing of patient and provider notification letters that encourage further evaluation. It’s proactive intervention that prevents leakage, potentially saves lives, and supports population health management.

And we’ve got the stats to prove it. Our radiology practice partner saw their average rate of return for lung nodule follow-ups nearly double one year after deploying Deep Dive Analytics. And, of those patients who received the notification letters, over 23% had a new or worsening condition.

Read why this initiative was recognized by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement at the 2017 National Forum on Quality Improvement.

Practice Productivity and Quality Maximization

We believe productivity is about more than just RVUs… That’s why we designed this module to provide one-click access to relevant, actionable intelligence that helps improve a variety of key performance metrics. With features that derive maximum value from your practice data and inform smart practice decisions, we turn the task of practice management into an informed, proactive business function that increases your bottom-line.

Inspired by physicians. Developed by radiology RCM and healthcare IT experts. Highly customizable to your practice needs.

Don’t let your practice value be under question, ever. HAP’s integrated clinical data analytics services can improve patient outcomes and empower your practice performance today.

How one radiology practice cracked the case on patient follow-up leakage

There’s been lots of discussion in the medical community about appropriate diagnosis of incidental lung nodules. But a less discussed, significant problem is this: patients with such nodules are still too often falling through the cracks and not getting the follow-up screenings required to mitigate their risks. The persistence of such a potentially critical problem, while not acceptable, is understandable. It is attributable not to any single provider, but rather to the underutilization of clinical data and non-existent communication processes across a healthcare system still struggling to achieve true integrated care.

Our client, a hospital-based radiology practice near Philadelphia, recognized this issue as a true opportunity to benefit patients and advance the quality improvement goals at the core of the value-based care concept. After an unsuccessful attempt to utilize an NLP product for this purpose, the practice turned to HAP. Our clinical data analytics team worked with them to develop a process to notify patients and their primary care doctors about the presence of lung nodules detected during earlier encounters where follow-up imaging is recommended. To do so, we utilized the data available in dictated radiology reports, imported it into our custom-developed analytics system, and cross-referenced it with information in our billing system to extract the information required to stand-up a truly integrated care coordination process.

We were able to, through manual analysis, come up with a set of profiles used to search through transcribed reports to identify the lung nodules wherever they are dictated in the report. Additionally, we used profiles with the same strength to identify specific studies where follow-up was required. By using these more robust data profiles, we were able to automate a large portion of the process required to execute the sending of letters to patients.

The results:

Identified more patients with incidental lung nodules where follow-up is recommended
Nearly doubled the average rate of executed follow-ups for such patients
Added missing quality and care coordination processes to an at-risk patient population
Strengthened the working relationship between the radiology practice and their health system partner

Expanding care coordination for patients with IVC filters

Another area of risk for patients and providers alike is IVC (Intra Vena Cava) filters. For prevention of PE (Pulmonary Embolism) in young trauma patients both civilian and military retrievable IVC filters are placed. The American Association for the Surgery of Trauma analyzed a cohort of 446 trauma patients receiving retrievable filters (predominantly for prophylaxis) and found only 22% were actually removed. The majority of patients who failed to have their filters retrieved did so because they were lost to follow-up. In this example, the younger the patient, the longer the filter will remain. When not followed-up, this situation leads to possible filter fracture, embolization, perforation, and caval thrombosis. In this study, the recommendation was that the hospital and provider where the filter was placed should be responsible for the removal.

To tackle this challenge, HAP again worked closely with our radiology client partner to enhance our data analytics to follow these patients and then contact their providers and the patient to notify them that the filter should be evaluated. Since launching, this process has also generated a significant improvement in follow-up rates for this population that often sees high leakage rates.

Case closed: practice proactivity pays-off

23% of the lung nodule patients who received letter notifications and returned for follow-up had new or worsening conditions. This timely intervention process, initiated and completely executed by the radiology practice (via HAP), improved patient care coordination and increased perceived practice value in the eyes of primary care physicians and health system partners alike. This is the origin of HAP’s clinical data analytics solution: Deep Dive Analytics. And we’re just getting started…