Overview The key to optimizing clinical effectiveness in today’s health care environment is to reduce variations in treatment patterns to ensure consistently high-quality outcomes at the lowest possible cost. CORE’s analysts employ clinical and financial data sources to provide information to Providence administrators, program managers, department managers and physician leaders. CORE provides analyses by diagnostic-related groups (DRGs), diagnoses, procedures, departmental resource utilization patterns, clinical outcomes and practice variations. These analyses can be used to track trends, to identify areas where practice variation can be reduced, and to gain an understanding of short- and long-term outcomes. CORE also provides comparisons of actual clinical practice to internal and external benchmarks, which can be used to help identify areas for potential clinical improvement.
CORE manages the measurement of quality indicators for all of Providence’s Oregon hospitals for the Hospital Quality Alliance Project of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The list of quality indicators began with measures for acute myocardial infarction, pneumonia, heart failure and surgical infection prevention, and it continues to expand into additional areas. In related efforts, CORE manages the reporting of core measures required by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) for Providence Health & Services in Oregon, the monitoring of National Quality Forum safe practices, and the reporting of hospital scores addressing the JCAHO national patient safety goals.
CORE also designs and develops information systems and reporting tools to support quality and safety initiatives. One example is the Web-based “Unusual Occurrence Reporting” (UOR) system, which is used for reporting, storing and analyzing medical errors and near misses. This system is used within Oregon and in other areas of Providence Health & Services.
CORE’s Clinical Information Unit maintains and supports several intranet Web sites, and utilizes financial and clinical decision-support systems to provide analytical and reporting services, including the following:
Program evaluation and monitoring
Operational projects, patient safety projects and clinical performance-improvement projects
Support for planning and marketing
Documentation and coding improvement
Internal and external benchmarking and quality monitoring and reporting
Physician, department and service-line profiling
Support of regulatory and accreditation reporting and compliance
Information systems management, design and development
