“At HHC, we have so much information and data that can be used to achieve our vision for quality, access and efficiency,” Bert Robles, HHC senior VP and corporate chief information officer, said in a news release. “What's been missing is the right tool that can draw insights from scale and diversity of our data.”
The goal of the platform in New York is to bring together financial, human resources, supply chain, operations and clinical data with advanced analytics tools “to help providers make smarter healthcare decisions that improve patient outcomes and reduce the risk of future complications that might bring them back to the hospital,” according to Sean Hogan, IBM's vice president of healthcare.
IBM is competing with a growing pack of established health IT companies and upstarts looking to satisfy providers' hunger to make sense of and marshal the massive pools of data now at their fingertips to meet those goals. This summer, IBM formed a data-analytics collaborative with four healthcare systems and the Premier healthcare alliance. Meanwhile, Partners HealthCare in Boston joined several other healthcare systems as an investor and customer of Salt Lake City-based Health Catalyst.
HHC is a $6.7 billion organization that provides medical, mental health, substance abuse and in-home services for New Yorkers, many of whom suffer from chronic illnesses like diabetes, asthma and heart disease. And with uninsured individuals representing more than one-third of HHC's patients, as well as changing models of care delivery and reimbursements, there is increasing pressure for high-quality care to be delivered at lower costs.
“We believe the IBM solution will lead us toward a smarter approach to diagnosis and treatment, so that we can truly provide better care to more patients at a lower cost,” Robles said in the release. “With this tool in place, we can see the future of care at HHC, care that is more predictive and proactive to manage care for patients with the greatest risk factors and most complex medical needs.”
Follow Rachel Landen on Twitter: @MHrlanden