PCCI’s Steve Miff Nominated for Dallas Business Journal’s Most Admired CEO Award

The Dallas Business Journal has announced that PCCI’s CEO, Steve Miff, PhD., has been nominated for its “2019 Most Admired CEO Award” in the healthcare category.

Dr. Miff joined PCCI as president and CEO in January 2017 and leads a pioneering organization that brings together top data scientists and healthcare experts to create programs supporting the health of vulnerable populations.

The Dallas Business Journal’s Most Admired CEO Awards honors the executives who inspire those around them, hold their employees, products and services in the highest regard, run their companies with integrity and are shining examples of how all companies should be run and managed.

Dr. Miff is a recognized national thought leader with more than 20 years of experience in healthcare analytics and consulting. He is a first generation American and has experienced first-hand many of the same challenges as the people PCCI supports in its community.

The Dallas Business Journal will honor its winners at a dinner on September 25, 2019. Rick Allen, CEO of Paragon Healthcare Inc., was the previous winner of the award in the healthcare category.

About Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation

Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation (PCCI) is an independent, not-for-profit, healthcare intelligence organization affiliated with Parkland Health & Hospital System. PCCI focuses on creating connected communities through data science and cutting-edge technologies like machine learning. PCCI combines extensive clinical expertise with advanced analytics and artificial intelligence to enable the delivery of patient-centric precision medicine at the point of care.

 

Dallas Medical Journal: Pediatric Asthma Confront the Barriers

PCCI’s mission is to support our community’s vulnerable populations, which includes helping children with chronic health issues, such as pediatric asthma. PCCI has been working for several years developing and testing predictive models to identify children at risk for asthma exacerbations. You can now see how this predictive modeling was used to help support pediatric asthma patients in the July issue of the Dallas Medical Journal.

In an article written by C. Turner Lewis, III, MD, Medical Director of Children’s Medical Clinics of East Texas, Dr. Lewis describes a pediatric asthma pilot program’s success story and the obstacles his team had to overcome. The good news is the children participating in Dr. Lewis’ program, aided by PCCI’s asthma medication ratio data, have experienced positive outcomes.

Have a look at Dr. Lewis’ article here:

Pediatric Asthma

PCCI is proud to be a part of this outstanding program and congratulate Dr. Lewis for the excellent service he is providing to the children of the DFW area.

To learn more about how PCCI’s innovative approach is helping support improved health for vulnerable populations in our communities, please visit our website.

PCCI’s Aida Somun Named to Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Board of Examiners for 2019

DALLAS – The Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has named Aida Somun, Chief Operations Officers at Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation (PCCI) in Dallas, Texas, to the Board of Examiners for the 2019 MalcolmBaldrige National Quality Award. The Baldrige Award is the nation’s highest honor for organizational innovation and performance excellence.

Appointed by the NIST Director, examiners are responsible for reviewing and evaluating applications submitted for the Baldrige Award, as well as other assessment-related tasks. The examiner board is composed of more than 325 leading experts competitively selected from industry, professional, trade, education, healthcare and nonprofit (including government) organizations from across the United States.

Those selected meet the highest standards of qualification and peer recognition, demonstrating competencies related to customer focus, communication, ethics, action orientation, team building and analytical skills. All members of the board must take part in a nationally ranked leadership development course based on the Baldrige Excellence Framework and the scoring/evaluation processes for the Baldrige Award. They must also complete an independent review of a Baldrige Award application or other comparable examiner task.

Somun has 15 years of experience as a business leader known for driving profitable growth, cost savings and delivery. She ensures operational excellence through consistent contributions to bottom line efficiency, performance and process improvements. She is most passionate about leading and influencing strategic decision-making for operationalizing the right innovative programs focused on improving individual’s health, both physical as well as socio-economic.

Named after Malcolm Baldrige, the 26th Secretary of Commerce, the Baldrige Award was established by Congress in 1987. Awards may be given annually to organizations in each of six categories: manufacturing, service, small business, education, healthcare and nonprofit. The Award promotes innovation and excellence in organizational performance, recognizes the achievements and results of U.S. organizations, and publicizes successful performance strategies. Since the first group was recognized in 1988, 124 awards have been presented to 115 organizations (including eight repeat recipients).

NIST manages the Baldrige Award in close conjunction with the private sector.

The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program also offers the 2019–2020 BaldrigeExcellence Framework: Proven Leadership and Management Practices for High Performance, which includes the world-emulated Criteria for Performance Excellence;Baldrige Excellence Builder; Baldrige Cybersecurity Excellence Builder; nationally ranked leadership training; and the Baldrige Collaborative Assessment and other assessment tools.

###

 

About Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation

Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation (PCCI) is an independent, not-for-profit, healthcare intelligence organization affiliated with Parkland Health & Hospital System. PCCI focuses on creating connected communities through data science and cutting-edge technologies like machine learning. PCCI combines extensive clinical expertise with advanced analytics and artificial intelligence to enable the delivery of patient-centric precision medicine at the point of care.

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services selects PCCI as a Prime awardee of the Network of Quality Improvement and Innovation Contractor

DALLAS The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has selected Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation (PCCI) as a Prime awardee of the Network of Quality Improvement and Innovation Contractor. This designation will allow NQIICs to bid on Task Orders over the next five years. As a Prime NQIIC awardee partnering with other Quality Improvement contractors under the new CMS Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract mechanism to support quality improvement efforts, each NQIIC may serve as:

  • Quality Improvement Experts
  • Facilitators/change agents for healthcare transformation by achieving bold aims at a high value
  • Innovators of quality improvement

As a NQIIC awardee, PCCI has demonstrated healthcare quality improvement expertise. Services supported by some of the NQIIC awardees may include:

  • Provide direct technical assistance in specific areas of healthcare quality improvement (e.g., patient safety, opioid misuse, nursing home quality, etc.)
  • Seek and gain commitments from patients, providers and stakeholders to achieve aims
  • Use a Human Centered Design that involves teaming with patient and family members to improve healthcare processes and outcomes
  • Focused on helping providers and healthcare organizations to achieve quantitative results for improved outcomes, lower costs, better care, less provider burden, greater transparency and more
  • Supporting a diverse array of organizations and populations, including: rural providers, vulnerable beneficiaries, clinical practices, hospitals, nursing homes, dialysis facilities and more
  • Support providers in efficient use of Health Information Technology and interoperability
  • Serve as backbone organizations to form and engage Community Coalitions
  • Convene and support Learning and Action Networks (LANs).

About Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation

Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation (PCCI) is an independent, not-for-profit, healthcare intelligence organization affiliated with Parkland Health & Hospital System. PCCI focuses on creating connected communities through data science and cutting-edge technologies like machine learning. PCCI combines extensive clinical expertise with advanced analytics and artificial intelligence to enable the delivery of patient-centric precision medicine at the point of care.

Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation Expands Opportunities for Women with Data Science and Technology Summer Internship Program

DALLAS – Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation (PCCI), improving healthcare in our communities with advanced analytics and artificial intelligence, recognizes the importance of a STEM education. Offering opportunities to women interested in data science is particularly crucial, which is the mission of PCCI’s summer internship program.

PCCI’s Women in Data Science and Technology Summer Internship, in collaboration with Southern Methodist University’s (SMU) Statistics Department, is one of the most prestigious internship programs in North Texas with a mission to expand opportunities for women in an industry that significantly lacks gender diversity.

The seven women participating in PCCI’s Women in Data Science and Technology Summer Internship program include high school, college and graduate students from Dallas Independent School District high schools, SMU’s Statistics Department as well as students from the University of Texas at Dallas and Creighton University.

The program’s interns will be immersed in PCCI’s daily work where they will directly experience the organization’s innovative healthcare and Non Medical Drivers of Health programs. The students will also have hands-on exposure to the practical applications of analytics, computing and data science.

“The Women in Data Science and Technology Summer Internship program is a rigorous and meaningful path that demonstrates to women what to expect and how to enter the technology market,” Steve Miff, PhD, President and CEO of PCCI. “Because of the important and valuable contributions from organizations such as SMU’s Statistics Department, we are able to place women side-by-side with clinical and data science experts where they can hone their programming and analytics skills within an atmosphere of mentorship and advancement.”

PCCI celebrates diversity and inclusion with a workforce that includes 54 percent women with 30 percent of its employees representing various ethnicities and communities from around the world. As an example of PCCI’s successful commitment to diversity, the Dallas Business Journal recently named Priyanka Kharat, PCCI’s Vice President, Data Engineering and Machine Learning, as a 2019 Women in Technology honoree.

PCCI’s Women in Data Science and Technology Summer Internship program is currently underway and will conclude in mid-August with a presentation program for their PCCI mentors showcasing the impact their projects are having on the Dallas community and Parkland Health & Hospital System.

About Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation

Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation (PCCI) is an independent, not-for-profit, healthcare intelligence organization affiliated with Parkland Health & Hospital System. PCCI focuses on creating connected communities through data science and cutting-edge technologies like machine learning. PCCI combines extensive clinical expertise with advanced analytics and artificial intelligence to enable the delivery of patient-centric precision medicine at the point of care.

 

###

Parkland Health & Hospital System, Department of Corporate Communications

5200 Harry Hines Blvd., Dallas TX 75235, 469-419-4400

www.parklandhospital.com

The Time Is Now for Health Systems to Get Serious About Non Medical Drivers of Health

A fundamental question continuing to face many health system executives is: How do we comprehensively address the needs of patients when those needs extend beyond the boundaries of traditional clinical care?  As President and CEO of PCCI, we have been focusing on this very challenge since 2012.  And while there has been much talk and excitement about Non Medical Drivers of Health (NMDOH), we believe that ~90% of the health system market still does not leverage social/economic information when designing population health programs, developing patient-specific treatment plans, locating new services, or conducting community needs assessments. But before health system executives can design an effective NMDOH strategy for their organizations, they must first assess where they are and where they would like to be based on the insights and advantages a progressive NMDOH strategy would offer. PCCI’s Non Medical Drivers of Health Maturity Model can help executives take this critical step.

Non Medical Drivers of Health Maturity Model

Level Zero: Incomplete Picture of an Individual’s Environment

Realistically, this is the starting baseline for most organizations. Often, teams will attempt to use clinical and claims data ALONE as a means to segment patient populations and project the impact on a patient or cohort. This rarely works; rather, it often leads to late treatment in acute environments, sub-optimal interventions, and erroneous insights about specific patients, patient populations, or geographic markets.

Level 1: High-Level View of NMDOH, Using Specific Social and Economic Indicators as Proxies

Teams can extract basic information from claims or clinical data that could serve as effective NMDOH proxies. An example would be to look at the number of changes in addresses in a specific record, over a 12-month period, as a strong indicator of housing instability.  At the highest level, teasing out information from existing records can begin to illuminate some of the critical social and economic challenges that may present for individuals in a given community. This level of insight also allows health- system teams to test basic assumptions about a market. We’ve seen teams fooled when the employment level appears to be relatively stable, only to subsequently discover that much of the employment is via low-wage jobs with very poor benefits.  If you begin to see that people are moving around even though the employment statistic looks stable, you begin to realize that the actual stability of your community might not be what you perceived it to be.

If at Level 1, Leadership Teams Should Be:

  • Developing high-level proxy indicators to reflect underlying social and economic challenges that could play a significant role in health status or the ability to access services.
  • Understanding the payer mix; who you serve and, even within the insured population, understand the wage/income levels because there is a high percentage of employed, low-wage individuals that have vulnerabilities associated with transportation, housing, affordable daycare, etc.
  • Becoming familiar with existing local or state connected communities of care programs or activities aligning providers and community-based organizations, such as food pantries, to streamline assistance efforts, reduce repeat crises and emergency funding requests, help address disparities of care, and improve the health, safety, and well-being of residents.

Level 2: Root Causes Understanding of Poor Outcomes at the Population Level

The rubber hits the road at level 2 and teams begin leveraging local data that directly reflect variation in social determinants. We believe that to understand root causes and build actionable models for patient engagement and support, you must evaluate data at the block level. Zip-code level aggregation often masks important details. This is particularly true in highly populated municipalities that can see a tremendous amount of social determinant variation within a 0.1 mile distance. For example, if I had block-level information providing insight that a six-block neighborhood within my market was having transportation-oriented issues and concentrated pockets of non-violent crime, I would model these insights into the deployment of my mobile diagnostic clinics or my development of innovative models to improve access.  Also, if I was discharging a patient who resided in that neighborhood, I would rethink how to schedule follow-up appointments, since the chances of the patient keeping the visits are extremely low. This level of insight and actionability would be missed at the zip-code level.

In collaboration with DFWHC Foundation, Community Council of Greater Dallas, and the University of Texas at Dallas, PCCI built a platform for Dallas called Dallas Community Data for Action and/or Community Data Insights [CDI].  CDI ingests and organizes multiple, publicly available data inputs, such as housing, education, food availability, and 911 and 311 data to generate real-time, actionable dashboards containing over 60 factors that all point to specific social determinants.  In Dallas, use of this data has been vital in understanding pockets of need and in locating areas where the impact of interventions can be the most profound.  You can also use this data more broadly to generate support to build community cross-sector collaboration, by enabling health systems to effectively  engage and coordinate with local municipality officials on community-based support services and planning, and also by helping philanthropic organizations to better understand (and track) community needs in order to invest in/prioritize funding areas that will produce the greatest impact.  In addition to having a detailed and dynamic picture of social and economic needs (demand for services), the CDI dashboard can quickly map out where support services are available/delivered and map/model the interdependencies and concentration of chronic health conditions with social support needs.  As this model is rapidly scalable, PCCI is already working with others across the country.

If at Level 2, Leadership Teams Should Be:

  • Integrating NMDOH market insights into your strategic planning process and your community engagement plan
    • Use block-level NMDOH in community needs assessments
  • Anticipating and predicting the correlations between multiple social and economic factors to inform your patient flow and access strategy (including your telehealth strategy). Start conducting trend analyses to anticipate and forecast the changes in local-market dynamics that will impact utilization, payer mix, and social/economic barriers to health.
  • Crafting a data-driven engagement plan to align more directly with local municipalities and local philanthropic organizations.

Level 3: Comprehensive Partnership Between a Community’s Clinical and Social Sectors

Participating organizations across a community are collaborating on one Information Exchange Platform and are connected through an innovative closed-loop referral system allowing them to communicate and share information with each other. Success at this highest level requires both a strong technology infrastructure and consistent programmatic deployment [at scale] across a community. This is what we’ve done in Dallas with our technology partners at Pieces Technology Inc.; effectively managing the right balance of people, processes, and technology has allowed us to achieve the positive results that we’ve seen.

Level 3 means a significant investment and a multi-year commitment, not only by the anchoring healthcare system or systems, but also by the local community.  It requires an initial investment and a robust sustainability plan that can ensure that the platform capabilities evolve with the changing needs of the community.  Deployment requires not only new technology, but an engaged local governance structure, new legal and data sharing agreements, and further refinement of data integration and advanced analytics at the individual level.  Integrating these into new/updated clinical and community workflows enables teams to proactively predict specific health and social/economic needs, the complexity and co-dependency of needs, and the ability to act real time at the point of care to address these needs.  This can facilitate making real-time referrals for community support services, tracking whether individuals accessed suggested medical or community resources (and what specific services were provided), and measuring and tracking the impact to individual/community resiliency, self-sustainability, health outcomes, and cost.  In Dallas, we’ve also started to leverage advanced data algorithms to risk-stratify individuals based on their health and social/economic needs to better prioritize and tailor resources and to proactively target high-risk individuals for engagement and follow-up via digital technology.

At levels 2 and 3, a health system must also think about how to leverage its foundation resources and internal employee community-outreach volunteer programs.  Once you better understand the patients that you’re serving in your market and the community-based services they access, you can better deploy employee-based efforts and philanthropic activities that align with the strategic efforts and provide maximal impact.

If at Level 3, Leadership Teams Should Be:

  • Crafting the information exchange platform governance infrastructure to delineate key roles, essential participants, and shared objectives.
  • Committing to cross-community collaboration [potentially including competitors] and a long-term effort; recognizing that your health system might be an anchor organization, but it cannot independently solve the entire problem.
  • Selecting and deploying the technology infrastructure [Pieces Iris™, TAVHealth, Unite Us, etc.] to enable cross-community engagement.  Develop updated clinical and community-based workflows.

In summary, if you’re just starting to address NMDOH, you’re late.  It is critical for health systems to begin their NMDOH journey today, especially if you serve a vulnerable population and/or operate in a market dominated by uninsured and Medicaid patients.  Addressing NMDOH is also equally important for organizations managing a lower-wage, commercially insured population and for any health system that is actively managing or considering taking on risk-based contracts.

If you’re well on your way up the NMDOH curve and actively integrating NMDOH into your strategic and care-delivery models, then start working on new models to bridge social isolation (physical and mental) and to better understand (and develop strategies to address) challenging behaviors, including chronic helplessness.

To learn more about our Dallas journey, please visit our website and see what our team of PCCI experts is doing to make a difference or visit our technology partners at Pieces Technology to experience the Pieces IRIS™ technology.

World Diabetes Day

Today, November 14, is designated as World Diabetes Day to unite the global diabetes community to produce a powerful voice for diabetes awareness and advocacy. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 425 million people are currently living with diabetes, prevalence is continuing to rise, and one in two people currently living with diabetes is undiagnosed.

Living with diabetes is a daily struggle, but many organizations have worked to create programs to decrease the struggle of those impacted. Ms. F, a 62-year-old African-American female with diabetes who relies on getting her nutrition from a food pantry, is a great example of someone that has benefited from these programs. Ms. F struggled with making proper food choices, adherence to proper medication, and transportation to make regular doctors’ appointments.

Through part of PCCI’s Connected Communities of Care program which shares patient’s information between providers and community-based organizations, Ms. F’s health and social service providers were able to connect and share information regarding her condition. When Ms. F visited the food pantry, staff members were aware of her diabetes. This knowledge enabled the staff to effectively guide her through her diet choices. This pilot program between three food pantries and Parkland Health & Hospital system helped many patients in taking the steps needed to control their disease.

In addition to limited access to healthy food choices, many patients in underserved communities have limited access to transportation. This challenge has made the remote monitoring of patients a critically important component in managing diabetes. PCCI is partnering with Parkland Health & Hospital System’s Global Diabetes Initiative to explore innovative approaches to improving the care of diabetic patients with foot ulcers which can lead to amputations if unresponsive to care. By acquiring data from home glucose monitoring devices and making real-time changes to treatment without physically having to see the patient, the (soon to be launched) study aims to create a sustainable remote glucose monitoring care system. This system will improve glucose control, promote faster healing of foot wound, and reduce long-term healthcare utilization and ultimately, reduce the burden cost of care for individuals and families.

Resources:

https://www.worlddiabetesday.org/

https://www.idf.org/e-library/epidemiology-research/54-our-activities/455-world-diabetes-day-2018-19.html

https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/pdfs/data/statistics/national-diabetes-statistics-report.pdf

Parkland RITE program targets prevention of hospital infections and improved sepsis care

Hospital-wide effort reduces infection rates, saves lives

DALLAS —Each year sepsis strikes approximately 1.7 million people in the U.S. and more than a quarter million die from the condition, making it a major cause of death. Healthcare-associated infections (HAI) contribute to about 25 percent of these deaths. According to infection prevention experts, many hospitals are trying different approaches to reduce healthcare-associated infections, improve care of patients presenting with sepsis, and save lives. In 2013, Parkland Health & Hospital System launched an innovative hospital-wide program to reduce HAI and sepsis-related deaths, called RITE (Reduce Infections Together in Everyone).

In the first five years, the multi-disciplinary program has achieved impressive results, reducing rates of infection each year since the program was launched. The net estimated impact of the RITE program is more than a thousand infections prevented and approximately $17,781,000 in cost avoidance.

“Providing quality care begins with providing safe care,” said Parkland’s Chief of Infection Prevention, Pranavi Sreeramoju, MD. “We targeted catheter-associated urinary tract infections and central line-associated blood stream infections hospital-wide, surgical site infections following eighteen different types of surgical procedures, and patients presenting with signs and symptoms of sepsis to our emergency department.”

Parkland’s prevention approach centered on standardizing care of patients at risk for these complications; engaging healthcare personnel by talking to them and exploring barriers to adoption of best practice; standardizing curriculum on how to prevent HAI and improve sepsis care; use of medical informatics tools such as early warning system for sepsis developed by Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation; use of best practice alerts and order sets in the electronic medical records; and improving workflows.

According to Dr. Sreeramoju who is also Associate Professor of Internal Medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center, Parkland’s RITE initiative forged a new approach to prevention by leaning on one part medical science and two parts social science.

“It’s been said about infection prevention that we know what to do – that’s the medical science. The biggest challenge for hospitals remains getting everyone to do the right thing, all the time,” she said. “Something as basic as hand hygiene requires constant vigilance in a hospital setting. So we decided to focus on identifying the most effective ways to influence behavior and make best practices easier to adhere to.

“We took a ‘high touch’ approach to working with staff, spending time analyzing interactions among multi-disciplinary caregivers, and we gave front-line staff the opportunity to provide input that could help us improve our infection prevention strategies,” Dr. Sreeramoju explained.

The scope of the RITE initiative is massive. Parkland Memorial Hospital has more than 40,000 inpatient discharges and 244,000 emergency department visits annually. Approximately 2,500 patients present to Parkland’s ED with suspected sepsis each year.

During Sepsis Awareness Month in September, organizations like the Sepsis Alliance, one of the nation’s leading sepsis patient advocacy groups, hope to increase public and healthcare professionals’ knowledge about this dangerous and vexing health risk. In a 2016 report, the Sepsis Alliance stated that “even though hospitalizations are increasing, a majority of Americans still don’t know what sepsis is or how to treat it.” The most recent Sepsis Alliance Awareness Survey found that less than one-half of all adult Americans have ever heard of sepsis. And the number is even lower among younger adults.

To learn more about services at Parkland hospital, visit www.parklandhospital.com

Contact

Parkland Health & Hospital System
Catherine Bradley
469-419-4400 catherine.bradley@phhs.org

PCCI
Mike Crouch
214-590-3887 Michael.Crouch@PCCInnovation.org

Family Doc to “Design Doc”!

“Hey doc, don’t you miss being a family doctor?”  is a frequently asked question over cocktails and during client meetings. My response is always the same, “Actually, I am still serving patients but in a very innovative way and on a much larger scale for better health and social impact. I am now a “Design doc.”

Positive Promotion

After 15 gratifying years of service as a traditional family doctor, I now enjoy taking care of patients by designing healthcare solutions that result in better patient experiences, lower costs, and increased quality. My new career as a “design doc” has been very rewarding.

Design with a Cause

Like any designer, impactful ideas put both the big picture and intricate details into context simultaneously. Taking into consideration questions like: How does a doctor think? What are a patient’s expectations, needs, and goals? And what are the high-precision treatment options available? Begin the innovative process of designing scalable healthcare solutions.

Care and Collaboration

By approaching solutions from a “design doc” perspective, I collaborate with healthcare executives, frontline care teams, services providers, and members of the communities we serve to combine the “art” of medicine with clinically engineered artificial intelligence. The result of these collaborations and insights are solutions that can augment clinical decision making at the point of care and facilitate timely coordination of care beyond the walls of service providers and into the community.

Same Goal, Different approach

Quality of patient care has always been top of mind both during my time in the clinic and my new role at the Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation (PCCI). I went from providing patient care to enabling providers to better care for their patients and the community through PCCI’s innovative solutions.

Learn more about PCCI’s careers, or stay up-to-date with our recent news by following us on FacebookTwitter and LinkedIn!

Photo via Thinkstock by Getty Images. Item number: 857015410.