Case Studies > University of Utah Health strengthens referring partner relationships

University of Utah Health strengthens referring partner relationships

Company Size

1,000+

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

LexisNexis Provider Data MasterFile
Epic EHR System

Tech Stack

Electronic Health Record (EHR) System
Data Integration

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Cost Savings
Customer Satisfaction
Productivity Improvements

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)

Applicable Industries

Healthcare & Hospitals

Applicable Functions

Business Operation
Quality Assurance

Use Cases

Regulatory Compliance Monitoring
Remote Collaboration
Remote Patient Monitoring

Services

Data Science Services
System Integration

About The Customer

University of Utah Health, the Mountain West’s only academic healthcare system, is staffed by more than 1,000 board-certified physicians trained in over 200 medical specialties and receives thousands of patient referrals each year in a five-state area. Facilitating seamless, secure patient transitions was crucially important, but without a means to promote accuracy and completeness of the provider directory, there were often breakdowns in communications with referring physicians. In an effort to elevate the all-important partnership between the medical center and physicians, the medical center leveraged LexisNexis® Provider Data MasterFile™ last year. Since choosing the comprehensive data solution, the medical center has witnessed a surge in satisfaction among physicians and patients, improved accuracy and efficiency, the elimination of redundancies and significant time and cost savings.

The Challenge

As a tertiary medical center in a five-state referral area encompassing more than 10 percent of the continental United States, University of Utah Health has long been committed to building strategic alliances with referring physicians. Yet one unwelcome perception persisted. A lag in the consistency of patient follow-up often resulted in a lack of uniformity of care and a breakdown in efficient communications with physicians. The reason for the lag was that University of Utah Health often had to verify disparate and sometimes inaccurate provider discharge data. Two to three FTEs dedicated substantial time to sorting through and manually validating accurate provider names, locations, credentials and more every day, using MPI, Google and other publicly available resources. As a result of this time-consuming verification process, referring providers were left in the dark on treatments, interventions and medications conducted on behalf of their patients, which, in the worst of situations, led to redundancies in after-discharge treatment, and increasing frustration among referring providers.

The Solution

University of Utah Health chose LexisNexis® Provider Data MasterFile™ to meet its goals of transitioning patients more efficiently and helping themselves and their referring partners meet Meaningful Use (MU) Transitions of Care objectives. These MU objectives state that Eligible Hospitals and Eligible Providers who transition their patients to another setting or provider of care, or who refer their patients, should provide a summary care record for targeted percentages of their patients. By linking the Provider Data MasterFile with its current Epic electronic hospital record (EHR) system, University of Utah Health was able to significantly improve the accuracy of provider data, which can change by as much as 25 percent in a single year. The powerful Provider Data MasterFile solution provides deep data coverage of more than 8.5 million U.S. health practitioners, with drill-down attributes such as name integrity (individual names, DBAs and Formerly Known As), addresses across all practice locations, billing locations, updated key data information, state license(s) and other credentials. The Provider Data MasterFile is continuously updated with billions of data points on every healthcare provider in the nation. As a result, University of Utah Health has made great strides in enhancing the care transition and strengthening its referrer alliances. On the front end, the patient’s physician information is entered into the Epic EPR provider dictionary. The data is then bumped against the Provider Data MasterFile and in nearly three-quarters of these instances, a match is provided with an 85 percent or higher accuracy rate. Now that verification isn’t forced to go through multiple people, the updated data is back in the system immediately, and the process has sped up significantly.

Operational Impact

Transitions of care have now become increasingly seamless. As soon as the receiving doctor examines the patient and signs the encounter, the information on that patient goes immediately to referring physicians, so they know exactly what happened during the time the patient was at University of Utah Health.
High-volume referrers can now log directly into the health record, where they are listed as part of the care team, and follow their patient’s health journey, every step of the way.
The comprehensive provider directory data has led directly to stronger referring physician relationships and better patient care.

Quantitative Benefit

Verification accuracy soared to 65-70% of patient data being verified immediately.
The data match provided in nearly three-quarters of instances with an 85% or higher accuracy rate.