Data & Analytic Services

Stratis Health has extensive expertise and experience working with data across all settings of health care. Our analytic staff has strong backgrounds in epidemiology, applied research, and biostatistics, as well as experience with data collection and analysis, data security, data management, and reporting.

We develop trend reports for provider organizations that are valuable and actionable for improving quality. These reports include the national, state, and participant group benchmark comparisons to motivate improvement and allow individual facilities to monitor progress of their rates over time.

Stratis Health has developed, implemented, and analyzed numerous reports on health care quality, including:

Minnesota Nursing Home HIT Survey. The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) contracted with Stratis Health to determine the level of health information technology (HIT) use in Minnesota nursing homes, by surveying all Medicare-certified nursing homes in the state. Final Report (June 2008, 13-page PDF)

Electronic Health Record Landscape Assessment: Minnesota’s Primary Care Clinics. Stratis Health surveyed more than 600 adult primary care practices in Minnesota to assess the level and types of EHR use in the state. The number of clinics that have implemented or were in the process of implementing an EHR system had significantly increased—from 46% in 2005 to 62% in 2007. (August 2007, 2-page PDF)

Home Care Reimbursement Methodologies. The Department of Human Services contracted with Stratis Health to provide independent analysis of and recommendations for reimbursement methodologies for home health services. (April 2008)

Analytic resources and services

Stratis Health provides an array of data and analytic services supporting health care quailty improvement and patient safety, including:

Support

• Advise providers and consumers on collection and use of valid and reliable data for quality assurance and improvement.
• Assist provider organizations in submitting data for public reporting
• Maintain extensive and detailed lists of Minnesota providers through Stratis Health’s contact management system, which may be used for surveys, mailings, maps, and other analysis

Analysis

• Conduct statistical analysis of Medicare data (both administrative and chart-based), publicly reported data on Home Health, Nursing Home and Hospital Compare CMS Web sites; MDS and OASIS data; hospital and outpatient claims; and health plan data:
  • Provide high level summaries and aggregate rates
  • Link data sources, identifying and incorporating additional data as needed
  • Serve as a neutral party to combine, analyze, and present aggregate data from a variety of sources or entities (e.g. health plans, providers) not able to share confidential data with each other
  • Create reports of results customized for individuals and/or respondents (e.g., individualized reports for each nursing home or hospital)
  • Planning and organizing data collection for projects, including interpreting data collection guidelines (standard), and developing tools
• Statistical/data expertise includes:
  • Complete comprehensive analysis using SAS or SPSS (e.g., frequencies, means, variance, regression, significance tests, anova)
  • Develop study design and analysis methodology: case-control, trend, program evaluation, program monitoring, run and control charts, cost-benefit, and policy
  • Develop SAS code for routine analysis
  • Manage large- and small-scale databases
  • Work with data received in various formats
  • Clean and validate data, subset, concatenate and merge datasets
  • Create formatted Excel spreadsheets or Access databases for data input, output reports including charts, graphs, maps, and other formats that display outcomes and results, and templates and charts to use for output in data monitoring and tracking
    

Surveys

• Develop and implement Web-based surveys:
  • Coordinate large scale surveys with vendors
  • Track survey results and manage databases to provide reminder emails and follow-up surveys
  • Link survey results to other data sources for analysis
    Create reports of results customized for each respondent

Maps

• Develop maps of provider locations and various health care data, such as rate counts by county or city
  

Train, educate, and present

• Present data design, data collection, interpretation, and presentation of outcomes/results in quality improvement to a variety of audiences with a range of knowledge levels and based on a wide range of expertise able to include examples for different fields and settings (e.g., public health, hospital, home health, nursing home)
• Train providers in collection of data from medical records (hard copy or electronic)
  

Other research skills

• Develop research questions and hypotheses, and provide input on question development
• Complete critical literature reviews and summaries
• Provide technical and grant writing
• Prepare data and analytical results for publication

Stratis Health fully understands data privacy and confidentiality requirements. Data security is a high priority for Stratis Health. We maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards in connection with the receipt and storage of electronic data. Compliance with secure data management is documented in a Stratis Health Security Management Plan.

Stratis Health has an extensive Confidentiality and Disclosure Policy based on applicable Social Security Act, Code of Federal Regulations, and QIO Manual citations.

Contact Stratis Health for assistance with your quality improvement and patient safety needs.

If your organization has data and/or analytic needs, contact us to discuss how we can help.

Mary Lou Haider, vice president, contract management and internal quality
952-853-8536