Connected Care: How Children’s Hospital Colorado Moved From Data Silos to Data-Driven Decisions

For data to have a positive impact on patient care, it must be quality and accessible. That’s why the Analytics Resource Center at Children’s Hospital Colorado has focused on improving data management by offering clinicians custom-built, self-service dashboards within the electronic medical record.

“Our clinical teams contribute a lot of data to the electronic health record, but really extracting that data in a meaningful way can be a challenge,” says Miriam Conant, director of patient safety for the health system. “Doing so has allowed us to achieve some pretty incredible outcomes.”

For example, Children’s Hospital Colorado can now track prevention activities such as bathing, cleaning high-touch surfaces and changing linens to prevent potential harm to patients.

Before, the health system’s approach to data was fragmented, and teams wasted time reconciling reports. Now, data is integrated across systems to deliver insights to clinicians. Achieving this goal required standardized metrics and precisely governed data sets, in addition to a culture shift.

“If you ask me, I’d say culture is probably more important than the technology itself,” says Kerri Webster, vice president and chief analytics officer at Children’s Hospital Colorado. “We had to move from a mindset of transactional reporting, where I’d ask the analytics team for data and they’d give me a report, to being partners with the people in the organization itself to help them think differently about the problems they’re solving and how analytics can help them.”

DISCOVER: Healthcare organizations can turn data into insights with the right strategy.