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About Gartner
Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, Gartner is the valuable partner to 60,000 clients in 11,000 distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 4,400 associates, including 1,200 research analysts and consultants, and clients in 85 countries. For more information, visit www.gartner.com.
2011 Gartner Business Intelligence Excellence Awards
The award recognizes the most successful recent BI implementations by organizations that demonstrate high levels of business impact and overall excellence in the integration of business, decision, analytical and information processes.
As business becomes increasingly more complex, the right combinations of information, coupled with the next generation of business analytics, will provide the means for faster, smarter and more consistent decision making, continuous improvements to business performance and greater efficiencies across the organization.," said John Hagerty, vice president and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner. "The strategies put forth by these finalists not only showed a consistently high level of benefits in terms of dollars saved, but also improvements to performance and efficiency across the organization. These case studies are great examples of the best practices needed to pursue successful BI objectives."
Finalists and Semi-Finalists
On February 13, 2011, Gartner announced the finalists and semi-finalist for the 2011 awards. The finalists are:
- Elie Tahari which is a New York-based global fashion brand.
- Yahoo!
- United Parcel Service
The finalist will compete at The Gartner BI Summit, being held May 2-4 in Los Angeles. This summit provides the insights, frameworks and best practices to implement BI, analytics and performance management initiatives that drive better decision-making and business performance across the organization
The semi-finalists are:
- Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc.
- Southeast Texas Medical Associates, LLP: The company adopted IBM's COGNOS's BI solution to advance the SETMA Model of Healthcare which tracks quality metrics on each patient seen, auditing of the provider performance on populations of patients, analyzing of that data to discover leverage points for improving care; public reporting by provider name at www.jameslhollymd.com of performance; designing of quality initiatives basis of this data analysis. This has allowed SETMA to improve mean Hemoglobin A1Cs from 7.65 percent in 2000 to 6.54 percent in 2011 and standard deviations from 1.98 to 1.2 in the same period, while eliminating ethnic disparities of care.
- The Boeing Company
The semi-finalists have been invited to present case studies in a 30-minute presentation format followed by 15 minutes of questions from the audience.
Competition
There were 55 submissions this year. Gartner stated that, "(they) believe BI Summit attendees will gain significant value in reviewing South East Texas Medical Associates, LLP's experiences driving BI, analytics, and/or performance management programs SETMA.
The award recognizes the most successful recent BI implementations by organizations that demonstrate high levels of business impact and overall excellence in the integration of business, decision, analytical and information processes.
About Gartner Business Intelligence Summit
The Gartner BI Summit, being held May 2-4 in Los Angeles, provides the insights, frameworks and best practices to implement BI, analytics and performance management initiatives that drive better decision-making and business performance across the organization. Through a unique mix of analyst and peer interaction, it helps make the case, drive adoption, create and sustain successful BI strategies.
Disclaimer
The identification of a Gartner Award winner or finalist is not an endorsement by Gartner of any vendor, product or service. More information on the Gartner BI Excellence Awards is available at http://www.gartner.com/technology/summits/na/business-intelligence/excellence-awards.jsp or on the Gartner BI Summit Web site at www.gartner.com/us/bi.
SETMA's COGNOS Project
SETMA's semi-finalist's Gartner award resulted from our COGNOS Project. The creating of quality measures is a complex process. That is why it is important for agencies such as the Ambulatory Care Quality Alliance (AQA), the NCQA, the NQF, the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) and PCPI, among others, to identify, endorse and publish quality metrics. The provider's ability to monitor their own performance and the making of those monitoring results available to the patient is important, but it only allows the provider to know how they have performed on one patient. However, the aggregation of provider performance over his/her entire panel of patients through an auditing tool carries the process of designing the future of healthcare delivery a further and a critical step.
Auditing of provider performance allows physicians and nurse practitioners to know how they are doing in the care of all of their patients. It allows them to know how they are doing in relationship to their colleagues in their clinic or organization, and also how they are performing in relationship to similar practices and providers around the country.
As a result, SETMA designed auditing tools through the adaptation to healthcare of IBM's business intelligence software, COGNOS. Multiple articles on SETMA's COGNOS Project can be found under Your Life Your Health and the icon COGNOS. Those discussions will not be repeated here but auditing is an indispensable tool for the improvement of the quality of healthcare performance and for improvement in the design of healthcare delivery.
Through COGNOS, SETMA is able to display outcomes trending which can show seasonal patterns of care and trending comparing one provider with another. It is also possible to look at differences between the care of patients who are treated to goal and those who are not. Patients can be compared as to socio-economic characteristics, ethnicity, frequency of evaluation by visits and by laboratory analysis, numbers of medication, payer class, cultural, financial and other barriers to care, gender and other differences. This analysis can suggest ways in which to modify care in order to get all patients to goal.
Analysis of Provider Performance through Statistics
Raw data can be misleading. It can cause you to think you are doing a good job when in fact many of your patients are not receiving optimal care. For instance the tracking of your average performance in the treatment of diabetes may obscure the fact that a large percentage of your patients are not getting the care they need. Provider Performance at the point of service is important for the individual patient. Provider Performance over an entire population of patients is important also. However, until you analyze your performance data statistically, a provider will not know how well he or she is doing or how to change to improve the care they are providing.
Each of the statistical measurements which SETMA tracks, the mean, the median, the mode and the standard deviation, tells us something about our performance. And, each measurement helps us design quality improvement initiatives for the future. Of particular, and often, of little known importance is the standard deviation.
From 2000 to 2010, SETMA has shown annual improvement in the mean (the average) and the median results for the treatment of diabetes. There has never been a year when we did not improve. Yet, our standard deviations revealed that there were still significant numbers of our patients who are not being treated successfully. Even here, however, we have improved. From 2008 to 2009, SETMA experience a 9.3% improvement in standard deviation. Some individual SETMA providers had an improvement of over 16% in their standard deviations. Our goal for 2010 is to have another annualized improvement in mean and in median, and also to improve our standard deviation. When our standard deviations are below 1 and as they approach .5, we can be increasingly confident that all of our patients with diabetes are being treated well.
An example of a statistical analysis of SETMA's diabetes care in regard to the elimination of ethnic disparities of care is given in the article Eliminating Ethnic Disparities in Diabetes Care Your Life Your Life Your Health The Examiner May 13, 2010, which is posted at www.jameslhollymd.com.
Public Reporting of Provider Performance
One of the most insidious problems in healthcare delivery is reported in the medical literature as "treatment inertia." This is caused by the natural inclination of human beings to resist change. Often, when patients' care is not to goal, no change in treatment is made. As a result, one of the auditing elements in SETMA's COGNOS Project is the assessment of whether a treatment change was made when a patient was not treated to goal.
Overcoming "treatment inertia" requires the creating of an increased level of discomfort in the healthcare provider and in the patient so that both are more inclined to change their performance. SETMA believes that one of the ways to do this is the public reporting of provider performance. That is why we are publishing provider performance by provider name under Public Reporting.
A more complete explanation of SETMA's philosophy and "public reporting" of provider performance can be found in the following articles:
- Transforming Healthcare Public Reporting of Provider Performance on Quality Measures Your Life Your Health December 3, 2009;
- Patient-centered Medical Home SETMA's COGNOS Project Changing Patient and Provider Behavior Your Life Your Health October 29, 2009.
- County Health Rankings - Part II Quality of Care - What Will Be Gained by Public Reporting Your Life Your Health March 4, 2010
QAPI - Quality Assessment and Performance Improvement
Quality Improvement Initiatives based on tracking, auditing, statistical analysis and public reporting of provider performance are critical to the transformation of healthcare both as to quality of care and as to cost of care.
With the above described data in hand and with the analysis of that data, it is possible to design quality initiatives for future improvement in care. Currently SETMA is designing two major quality initiatives. The details of these two initiatives can be reviewed below :
- Designing a Quality Initiative: How? Hospital Re-admissions Your Life Your Health April 22, 2010.
- Eliminating Ethnic Disparities in Diabetes Care Your Life Your Life Your Health May 13, 2010
Without a systems approach to healthcare, each of these steps are impossible; certainly, the analysis and transformation of healthcare is impossible. With a systems approach, this logical and sequential process is possible and rewarding for provider and patient. This process has set SETMA on a course for successful and excellent healthcare delivery. Our tracking, auditing, analysis, reporting and design will keep us on that course.
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