Improving accreditation, certification and quality improvement programs through automated abstraction of electronic health data.

Patient Insight, Inc., Marina Del Rey CA

Investigators

Abstract

ABSTRACT SBIR Phase I: Reduce the burden of data abstraction for certification, accreditation and quality improvement programs via a new platform to automate the abstraction of measures and a novel interface to improve human abstractor workflow. The broad impact/commercial potential of this SBIR Phase I project is to drive down the burden of participation in quality improvement programs, specifically, the resource intensive manual data abstraction process to derive and report quality measures that are instrumental to improving health outcomes and controlling costs. Patient Insight proposes improvements through automated abstraction methods and an interface for human abstractors to better visualize electronic health record (EHR) data and complete their work. The existing approach is a barrier to broader uptake of quality improvement initiatives such as accreditation. Patient Insight?s proposed solution consists of leveraging both proven and proprietary technologies to extract data via EHR agnostic application programming interfaces (APIs), better target eligible patients, and calculate measures via natural language processing (NLP) algorithms and custom queries. The core innovation is a novel data mining engine and user interface that improves the process of human data abstraction for clinical and quality documentation such as those required to achieve accreditation. The proposed project will allow Patient Insight, in partnership with the American College of Cardiology, a leader in the hospital based accreditation space, to develop a proof-of-concept pilot project at a select hospital and compare human and automated data abstraction methods for a pre-selected number of measures that are mandated as part of the ACC?s Heart Failure Accreditation program. Once completed, Patient Insight will expand on the technology, design and user research data/requirements with a roadmap for product enhancements for Phase II that will enable the building of a commercially viable ?add-on? service for sites participating in the ACC?s suite of accreditation programs and eventually expand to additional ACC service lines as well as other accreditation and certifying bodies. Success will represent a transformative change in general-purpose abstraction and an interface that will support a broad array of accreditation measures and abstraction workflows thereby solving a critical inefficiency both clinically and financially for hospitals while improving patient health outcomes.