Introducing Population Builder™: Stratification Module

As healthcare organizations continue to care for unpredictable, critically ill patients, the ability to identify the right patient populations is key to delivering the right care at the right time. Without an accurate, precise stratification model, organizations struggle to maximize the impact their population health team has on the overall population they manage.

Even though quality, cost-effective healthcare relies on accurate patient stratification, to date, tools to stratify patients according to risk have limitations. Across the industry, common challenges that prevent organizations from effectively identifying patient groups through stratification tools include the hidden, “black box” nature of stratification algorithms, time-intensive customization, and poor data aggregation (e.g., relying on only claims or only clinical data, rather than both).

Identifying the Right Patient Populations

To make up for stratification shortcomings, Health Catalyst® has created the Population Builder™: Stratification Module, a tool that allows organizations to rapidly identify patients best suited for population health programs through predefined criteria and customizable filters. The tool supports improved outcomes, decreased costs, and more efficient report generation.

Population health leadership and team members gain the following key competencies with the Stratification Module:

• Saves time and increases standardization through predefined populations and value sets.
• Improves overall accuracy and precision through customized machine learning models.
• Combines EMR and claims data sources in one place to enable data-informed decisions.

The Stratification Module provides organizations with a chronic condition registry library, a predefined high ED utilization population, a Transitional Care Management population, industry standard and machine learning risk models, and access to integrated claims and clinical encounter data, which the Population Builder application delivers.

Built on the power of Population Builder, the Stratification Module also provides industry standards; predefined populations, including over 6,000 value sets and 21 predefined chronic conditions registries; and populations of interest for care management programs. Starter sets provide a baseline that organizations can copy or customize to fit their unique patient needs and increase efficiency.

The populations are available through Population Builder—an easy-to-use interface that allows clinicians, analysts, and other stakeholders to build populations of interest and access predefined chronic condition registries and utilization, all within minutes. Users can also bring in predefined populations, such as high ED utilizers (Figure 1).

Increase Efficiency and Informed Decision Making

With pre-defined starter sets that organizations can easily customize to fit their unique patient needs, population health leadership can use the Stratification Module to increase efficiency while generating patient lists, improve data aggregation by merging claims and clinical data sources, and make more informed decisions based on accurate patient stratification methods. The Stratification Module frees team members’ time so they can focus on delivering the right care to each patient—how, when, and where they need it.

Additional Reading

Would you like to learn more about this topic? Here are some articles we suggest:

1. Introducing the Health Catalyst Population Health Foundations Solution: A Data- and Analytics-first Approach to PHM
2. Value-Based Care: Four Key Competencies for Success
3. Identifying Vulnerable Patients and Why They Matter
4. Care Management Analytics: Six Ways Data Drives Program Success
5. Measuring the Value of Care Management: Five Tools to Show Impact