Analytics Enables Improved Identification and Treatment of Patients with Substance Use Disorders

THE CHALLENGE

Up to 30 percent of hospital admissions are related to substance use disorders (SUD), costing more than $13B annually. Recognizing that some of its patients had unmet treatment needs, Carle Health developed an inpatient addiction consult service, allocating resources to improve the quality of addiction treatment. The organization had developed custom queries and reports to obtain longitudinal data for its patients with SUD. However, getting the data required a custom code that was re-created every quarter and updated when the EHR changed. The organization needed a better solution to provide its physician leaders with the data required to improve the quality of care for patients with SUD.

THE PROJECT

Carle leveraged Health Catalyst® Data Operating System (DOS™) platform and Self-Service Analytics Suite to provide ready access to the data and insights required to improve the identification and treatment of patients with SUD. Physicians leading the inpatient addiction consult service can quickly visualize and evaluate treatment and patient outcomes over time. Leaders can visualize and assess the number of sedatives/hypnotics each patient receives, escalations in the level of care required, length of stay, and readmission rates. In addition, leaders can view outcomes data for patients in aggregate and by treatment location, and can drill into patient-specific data.

THE RESULT

By leveraging DOS and the Self-Service Analytics Suite, Carle has increased its understanding of its patients’ needs and can make data-informed decisions about using resources best to improve SUD treatment and long-term outcomes.

• For the first time, Carle has the integrated data and analytics required to evaluate the care provided to patients with substance use disorders.
• 5X faster analytics insight.
• More than 800 manual labor hours avoided—eliminating the need to use limited resources to create custom reports.

“Evaluating the effectiveness of our work using the analytics application has provided us with valuable insights and uncovered new possibilities for improvement.”

James Basante, MD, Carle Health