DETROIT—ProMedica has invested in a startup that will help the Toledo, Ohio-based system analyze clinical and demographic data to better design interventions and ideally show the impact of those efforts.
ProMedica CEO Randy Oostra announced the creation of the Ebeid Data Nerve Center, an initiative that will use predictive modeling to identify social needs and ways to effectively address them among patients, health plan members and employees.
"Analyzing the data tells us what interventions are going to matter most, so we can begin to refine, screen and take action," Oostra said while announcing the effort for the first time Tuesday at Modern Healthcare's Critical Connections Symposium on Social Determinants of Health.
The data center will provide clinicians with a whole picture of the patient by linking socio-economic information with health outcomes. ProMedica along with four other organizations, including OSF HealthCare in Peoria, Ill., and venture capital fund LRVHealth, have invested a total of $7.3 million in the firm, Socially Determined, a provider of social determinants of health data analytics. Socially Determined will collaborate with ProMedica in its data nerve center initiative.
Ashley Perry, senior vice president at Socially Determined, hopes the use of applied analytics can assist in a more upstream strategy by identifying how social needs impact healthcare costs, utilization and outcomes.
"We don't need to wait to see the impact of social determinants, retirement, relocation, the death of a spouse, all of those things will affect patients negatively," Perry said. "So thinking proactively of how to intervene early before they end up in our EDs should be critical."
The initiative is one of the most advanced efforts yet to leverage public and heath data. The system will track the progress of referrals clinicians make to local social service providers as well as the effectiveness of the system's own interventions.
Dr. Brian Miller, chief medical information officer at ProMedica, said the health system has gathered data from nearly 200,000 individuals. Miller said he was hopeful the project would help fill a void in statistical evidence that he felt has caused many health systems to be wary of making deeper investments toward addressing social determinants of health.
"This is essentially pop health in a nutshell," Miller said. "We're taking disease groups, we're taking demographic pieces and we're driving specific interventions."
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the amount ProMedica invested in the firm Socially Determined.
