Applying an integrated health analytics platform (iHAP) to monitor and evaluate an accountable care organization in hood river county, Oregon

Background: As some states move forward with Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) to provide health care services, it also becomes important for sponsoring healthcare organizations and public health departments to monitor their progress and evaluate impacts on their targeted populations. More recently, available data from larger datasets and existing health records are helping establish baselines and examining relationships among demographic, clinical, behavioral, and cost variables. Also, as analytical and data visualization technologies grow more capable, opportunities for applying these more integrated toolsets result in benefits to both the providers of health-related services as well as to the populations under care. Purpose: The purpose of this project is to establish and examine the linkage of large and small scale datasets within an integrated health analytics platform to successfully monitor an Accountable Care Organization's activities and evaluation metrics, while also making possible comparisons with other participating counties and state-level indicators. Methods: Using a collaborative approach, Hood River county and Northrop Grumman Corporation (Public Health Operating Unit) are growing iHAP services to provide health decision-makers with data integration, analysis, and visualization tools to examine program/process improvements as well as impacts from ACO activities. The iHAP incorporated analytics and visualization tools to examine target population conditions and risk factors, opportunities for prevention and intervention, and current expenditures. Results: Using iHAP, Coordinated Care Organization data from two Oregon counties were integrated with state level All Payers All Claims (APAC) data and data from local community health organizations. This pilot resulted in high quality visualizations of “big data,” including linked data sets combining financial and encounter-level data. Such data provided cost estimates and comparative effectiveness research (CER) findings to examine current practices. Discussion: We plan to share details of the collaborative project using the iHAP tools for a community- and clinic-based innovation.