First Quarter Round-Up: The Arcadia Advisor Network, Three Big Trends, and Beautiful Data

Snow falling here in Boston notwithstanding, spring has arrived and we’re entering the second quarter of 2016. As we await warmer weather, we’re looking back at some of the year’s highlights so far – from our Advisor Network to our Data Gallery – and checking on the accuracy of our 2016 predictions.

Arcadia Advisor Network

We launched the Arcadia Advisor Network, bringing together industry experts from academia, government, leading ACOs, health plans, and health systems to advise our leadership team. Richard Bohmer, MD, MPH, former Professor at Harvard Business School and author of “Designing Care,” acts as the board’s chair and is joined by an impressive roster of founding members, including Leslie Norwalk, Strategic Counsel to Epstein Becker Green and former Acting Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Drex DeFord, former CIO, Steward Healthcare, Seattle Children’s Hospital, Scripps Health, and United States Air Force; past chairperson, CHIME, and Patrick Charmel, CEO of Griffin Hospital and Chairman of the Value Care Alliance, one of our newest clients.

We’ve seen some other new faces around the office, too. Jon Cook, the former Deputy CIO at the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), joined our team in January as our Chief Technology Officer. We’re benefiting not only from his technical leadership, but from his deep knowledge of the broader challenges our customers face as they navigate the transition to value-based care.

Jon is joined by many other new Arcadians – from nurses to engineers. We continue to grow rapidly, so we are always on the lookout for awesome future Arcadians. If you want to grow along with us, please check out our careers page, or meet some awesome Arcadians.

Big Trends: data quality, payer-provider collaboration, and interoperability

We predicted three big trends in 2016, and we are starting to see those play out.

Data quality over quantity: We believe healthcare transformation requires high-quality data that can be trusted by all parties.

At HIMSS, we had a rapt lunch-and-learn audience as our principal data scientist Michael Simon, PhD dove deep into data quality challenges for organizations engaged in population health.
Our chief medical officer Rich Parker, MD wrote about bad data’s effect on population health management.
Jon Cook told us why technology needs to get physicians the data they need, when they need it – and then stay out of the way – in his piece The Technologist Will See You Now.
We kicked off our #DataCures campaign to celebrate and share how applying data is driving positive change and solving some of the healthcare industry’s most complex problems – like the way our health care coordinated network client partnered with us to develop Arcadia Launchpad.
We shared five best practices for investing in clinical quality improvements – with data quality coming first.
Going into the home stretch of March Madness full swing, we suggested our own ‘Final Four’ of data priorities.

Payer-provider collaboration: We believe that with high-quality and trusted data, innovative partnerships can be forged.

In one of our series of “Meet an Arcadian” profiles, Drew Novack talks about being an implementation manager at Arcadia and building a foundation for payer-provider collaboration on quality improvement and risk documentation initiatives.

Interoperability: We believe this is a laudable goal, but getting there will require hard work from all parts of our industry.

Todd Levin, one of the longest tenured Arcadians, talked about the difference between “interoperability” and “intraoperability”.
We appreciated the industry-wide pledge for interoperability that Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell announced at HIMSS – but we think it will be a formidable challenge.
Jon Cook compared healthcare interoperability challenges to the early days of trading stocks and booking travel.

HIMSS and AMGA: the debut of our Data Gallery

We were energized by our conversations with so many knowledgeable, thoughtful people at HIMSS and AMGA.

Steward Health Care Executive Director Heather Trafton, one of our clients, presented at HIMSS on “Integrated EHR Data and its Impact on Pioneer ACO Quality Programs. Heather spoke about how our work aggregating EHR data helped Steward achieve Pioneer ACO success.
We launched our 2016 Data Gallery at HIMSS – as our principal data scientist Michael Simon, PhD has said, “Our love for data has led us to making it beautiful.” Our visualizations – some of which are interactive – can be explored in our virtual Arcadia Data Gallery. In a related blog post, one of our data visualization artists broke down his piece Weaving Hospital Variation in more detail.
At AMGA, we found providers more and more open to value-based care as a way to thrive in a changing marketplace.

We’re eager to see what comes next in the second quarter of 2016 – and to enjoy some sunshine. For more information, please reach out to us using the contact form below.

Alyssa Drew

Alyssa Drew is the Strategic Marketing Director at Arcadia, where she helps healthcare systems understand and unlock the value of their data to enable their success in value-based care. Her background bridges both strategy and technology. In over five years at Arcadia, she has managed complex analytics and transformation projects for Arcadia clients across the country and served as Arcadia’s Business Practice Leader. Before joining Arcadia, she held management roles in enterprise analysis, strategic planning, and financial analysis for a $1B organization.

Alyssa has an undergraduate degree in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University. She has tremendous enthusiasm for the incredible work her Arcadia colleagues do on a daily basis, and is excited to host the Arcadia Healthcare Datathon annually.