HealthLeaders Magazine offers a look at issues and trends that are shaping the business of healthcare in the United States today. Free to download.
Supply Trends in Opioid Medications
December 2018
The healthcare community continues to see a rise in opioid misuse and drug-overdose deaths. In response, public health and healthcare entities have launched awareness campaigns and policy changes in an attempt to curb inappropriate use and prevent addiction. But has the effort to increase public and provider awareness decreased prescription rates? IBM® Watson Health™ conducted two studies to explore this issue.
While the CMS Hospital-Acquired Conditions (HACs) are believed to represent potentially avoidable complications of care, it is evident that many of these adverse outcomes occur each year.
In fiscal year 2016, nearly 28,000 patient safety adverse outcomes across 14 HACs were reported among 20,297,766 civilian inpatients.* The total cost of HACs in terms of days of stay, mortality, and costs of care are a function of the frequency of the adverse outcome and the incremental impact of the HAC on the measure of interest.
Researchers from IBM® Watson Health™ set out to evaluate the incremental consequences of selected inpatient adverse outcomes from selected CMS Hospital-Acquired Conditions (HAC) in terms of mortality, length of stay, and total hospital cost per case using all-payer data from acute care hospitals in the U.S.**
*Federal fiscal year 2016, IBM Projected Inpatient Data Base.
**Federal fiscal year 2016, IBM Projected Inpatient Data Base.
The Childhood Obesity Epidemic: Insights from claims plus EMR data
August 2018
Claims data alone may not accurately reflect the underlying prevalence of childhood obesity; healthcare providers may be less likely to add an obesity diagnosis to a claim because of the stigma associated with the condition.
Linking claims data and clinical data from electronic medical records (EMRs) can enhance the awareness and management of childhood obesity and the associated trajectories of care.
IBM Watson Health analyzed EMR data to differentiate between the prevalence of clinical evidence and the diagnosis of obesity in childhood, as well as describe how the combined data assets of claims and EMR data provide a more comprehensive understanding of childhood obesity and potential related comorbidities.
Formerly known as the Truven Health Analytics® 100 Top Hospitals, the Watson Health™ 100 Top Hospitals® annual study spotlights the best-performing hospitals in the U.S. based on publicly available data used to create a balanced scorecard of clinical, operational, and patient satisfaction metrics.
Overall, the 2018 edition of the 100 Top Hospitals® study of 2,785 hospitals across the U.S. found that, of the hospitals surveyed, the top-performing hospitals in the country achieved better risk-adjusted outcomes, while maintaining a lower average cost per beneficiary and higher profit margin, than non-winning peer group hospitals.
Download this latest Fact File now to learn the key performance measures on which 100 Top Hospitals showed the greatest outperformance versus non-winning peer group hospitals
