Louisville, Ky.-based Norton Healthcare, a five-hospital system with 140 sites of care throughout Kentucky and southern Indiana, is using analytics to propel itself from managing healthcare to managing consumer health — providing not only the best quality care and outcomes, but also the friendliest and easiest to use healthcare in its market.
"Data is really at the center of our strategic plan. It's very important for our organization," Michelle Kannapel, director of business intelligence and financial analytics at Norton Healthcare, said during a webinar hosted by Becker's Hospital Review and sponsored by Change Healthcare.
The journey to becoming a consumer health management system started with the realization that volume-based payment systems are still the norm, but meeting consumers' needs and expectations can help a health system achieve the most important goal associated with value-based care: better patient health. Focusing on the consumer engages patients, keeps them in the system and promotes preventive care, allowing for optimal care management and improved health outcomes. Norton realized this when it began looking at patients as partners, according to Ms. Kannapel. The system identified the need to help patients maintain a health lifestyle across all care settings, rather than during a specific visit or encounter.
The system devised a five-prong consumer strategy:
- The strategy began with setting a goal to create a culture characterized as "the best place to receive care and the best place to provide care."
- It is bolstered by the system's patient access portal, MyNortonChart, which allows patients to communicate easily with physicians, pay bills, book appointments and review lab results, ultimately building the Norton brand and loyalty among patients and helping the health system collect data and better understand its consumers' needs.
- To become a preferred provider, Norton strived to improve access to care through a centralized access call center, where calls for more than half of the system's primary care practices are routed. The aim of the call center is to improve scheduling, fill gaps and improve access by driving down patient wait times.
- The health system also recognized the need to make its quality metrics more digestible for patients. This meant improving its website to become more consumer-friendly and frame information with the consumer in mind, drawing them in based on what they would want to know most about their providers.
- Integral to consumer strategy is the patient experience — ensuring each and every patient interaction is remarkable. Norton implemented digital rounding by giving patients iPads outfitted with patient surveys and checklists, allowing near-immediate feedback.
"A top priority of our CEO is to make sure every single patient who comes through our door has a great interaction with everyone, no matter if it's the registration clerk, nurse, doctor, tech, environmental services — no matter who it is," said Ms. Kannapel.
And while this five-prong strategy is responsible for significantly improving care at Norton, data analytics has really helped kick Norton's strategy up a notch. In fact, Ms. Kannapel said weaving the system's data analytics strategy into its consumer strategy is one of the biggest accomplishments of her career. "Data analytics reporting can be pretty chaotic — [data] can come from different places, two reports show different numbers, duplication of efforts — there can be a lot of problems. Not to say that never happens here, but we've really taken big strides to improve that."
How data analytics supports consumer strategy
Norton uses data analytics to improve its consumer strategy through an internal business intelligence solution. This solution is a one-stop-shop enterprise analytics website that provides a meaningful dashboard for all of the system's data. It was built using Change Healthcare's Analytics Explorer solution and is backed by Norton's proprietary data.
"Explorer has taken millions and millions of lines of data and presented it in a visual format," Ms. Kannapel said. For example, Norton has integrated its MyNortonChart with the Analytics Explorer, which allows it to monitor how many patients are active and engaged through the app and in what ways they are engaged. Norton is able to stratify and chart users by age, gender, log-in time and mobile or desktop use, among other characteristics. This allows Norton to better understand the ways it is meeting its consumers' needs and where it has opportunities to grow.
Norton has also integrated analytics into its marketing department, demonstrating the value of various marketing initiatives and campaigns. For example, it can use analytics to identify which avenues are best to reach patients and ensuring those avenues are marketing the appropriate service initiatives.
The system has used the solution to share clinical effectiveness data with providers, promoting efficiency and continuous improvement. Perhaps most importantly, the insights provided through the Analytics Explorer have helped demonstrate value and gain buy in for improvement initiatives from the system's executive leadership team.
"We've truly made healthcare analytics a priority through [Analytics Explorer]," Ms. Kannapel said. The self-service format of the solution has made it a powerful tool throughout the organization, allowing the system to improve utilization, increase efficiency and improve patient engagement.
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