Bryan Health, Lincoln Nebraska

Sophisticated Analytics Support Registries, Quality Improvement

Data Integration Drives Success at Bryan Health

A history of excellence. Bryan Health, located in Lincoln, Nebraska, is a nationally recognized leader in heart and vascular care, serving patients from as far away as Arkansas and Wyoming.

Sophisticated outcomes analysis tools. Analytics are a crucial component of the Bryan Health cardiovascular information system (CVIS), supporting the hospital’s quality-improvement initiatives and registry participation.

Close collaboration between clinical and IT staff. Staff and clinicians work together to ensure that the hospital gets the most out of its data.

Multiple modalities and clinical areas utilize data analytics and reporting. Analytics help diagnostic and invasive areas streamline workflow and optimize performance. Bryan Health has been delivering top-quality care for over 85 years. Named a Distinguished Hospital for Clinical Excellence™, it has been recognized multiple times for the care it delivers. Highly skilled clinicians, state-of-the-art technology, and an unwavering focus on quality form the foundation of Bryan’s success. The recent implementation of LUMEDX analytics as part of its CVIS has supported Bryan’s ongoing outcome improvement efforts.

Clear-Cut, Ongoing Quality Improvement Efforts

In cardiovascular care, national registry data is the gateway to quality, enabling not just quality improvement projects, but clinical research and trials, process improvements—and maximum reimbursements. At Bryan, Cardiac Data Managers Linda Grdina, RN, and Susan Barnason, RN, manage the STS and ACC-NCDR® registries as well as internal quality efforts, putting them at the center of data analysis and reporting. “We’re always looking at our numbers and trying to improve here,” Grdina says. At the top of the list is door-to-balloon times, but also mortality and complications for Cath PCIs as well as renal failure. “We’ve worked on lowering our post-operative atrial fib rate for quite a few years, and have been able to get it down into the 20 percent range. In fact, one or two quarters we’ve even been below the STS value.”

Because volumes at Bryan are high, copious amounts of data are generated. Managing and monitoring all this data is critical to Bryan’s success. Coupled with the ambitious, ongoing QI projects, this meant that a more sophisticated solution was needed.

Drill-Down Saves Time and Yields More Meaningful Reports

“From a registry standpoint, we’ve gained a lot. We can look more closely at the information in the report,” explains Grdina. “Being able to break reports down, drilling down into your data—this is very helpful for us.”

Running reports with a focus on mortalities and major complications is more efficient. “If you were to do that all manually, you would have to break down each complication about 25 ways. With analytics, we can do that easily and quickly,” Grdina says.

The flexibility enables users to identify data trends and understand the causes. “We can break reports down by quarter or by month—whatever we need,” Grdina says. “For example, let’s say you find that one quarter your infection numbers are up. And perhaps you knew that in the month of February you were doing some OR renovations. So you could break down that quarterly report by month and see if your infections were up only during the OR renovations. And you could know that was why you had a problem, and take steps to prevent that in the future.”

Reporting That Exceeds Expectations Creates Demand

With the demand for reports at the Bryan growing daily, clinical and IT staff work closely together to ensure that the hospital makes the most of its investment in technology. Senior Programmer/Analyst Jovy Banaag writes a wide variety of custom reports and the user-friendly front-end and sophistication of the reports mean that he gets more requests each day.

“People are asking for more information to be added on existing statistical reports, wanting new reports on a pretty regular basis,” Banaag says. “Bryan’s CV service line has a need for integrated statistical data reporting, and LUMEDX provides us with a solution.”

Connecting the Service Line and the Enterprise

There are plans to increase analytics use within the Bryan Health—and ultimately connect it to enterprise systems and the EHR. “Our goal at Bryan is to be fully integrated,” Project Manager Deb Bolte says. “In the future we plan to link analytics to our decision support system so that we can make better global decisions as well.”

“Integration is so important,” Grdina adds, citing an instance in which a physician wanted to know how many patients with aortic valve stenosis were referred to surgery. “Because our CVIS is integrated, I was able to do a comparison for him—quickly,” she said. “Anytime you can provide physicians with information and reports that are complete and timely, you have increased the opportunity for evaluation and improvement. And that is so important in healthcare—now and forever. I think it’s a priority of every hospital. You have to improve your outcomes. And the more integrated we are at Bryan, the more easily we can achieve this.”

“The sooner you have the data, the sooner you’re able to act on it. That is the power of real-time analytics.”

Joe Kelly, Administrative Director of Cardiovascular Informatics and Quality Improvement, Duke University Health System