Thursday, August 7, 2014

What do I do?

I often get asked what I do at St. Joe's and find it difficult to explain.  I work as a System Support Admin, which basically means that I boss a computer around :).  I'm also a sort of Systems Analyst, which means that I look at numbers a lot.

I'm part of a team working for the CHI Franciscan Heart Center.  The team follows patients that have heart procedures at any of our Franciscan facilities, and we collect data.  What sort of data?  Well, just about anything that might have some sort of impact on their disease, on their care, on their health, on their outcomes.  How much anesthesia, how much they weigh.  And it is all used for research, to help us provide better care for them and for future patients.  If something doesn't work, we tell the doctors and surgeons about it so that they don't do that again.  If something works better, we help make certain that the technique gets used more often.  We help keep an eye on things to make sure that patients are getting appropriate medications and treatments at appropriate times and places.  We try to encourage the doctors to give patients all the tests they need for proper diagnoses, and to not order tests that are not helpful.

My role is to aggregate and report on the data that the team enters into our database.  At any time, an administrator or physician may want to know about a specific data point; I get them the answer.  How many patients had multiple bypass last month?  I can answer that question.  How many cardiac patients were prescribed statin drugs last month?  I can answer that question.  How many patients last week did NOT get all of their meds on time?  I can answer that question.   How many patients two days ago did not get appropriate ventilator weaning?  I can answer that question.  What are the chances for successful outcome of a specific surgery on a specific patient?  With the right data I can give you an answer.

Besides using our data internally for our own research, I also submit data to the National Registries such as the Society of Thoracic Surgeons and the American College of Cardiology.  These are databases that collect all of the data on all heart procedures done across the U.S. for use by researchers. There is also a Washington State database that I report to.

The data from these Registries are all held to a high standard.  Every few years we are audited for accuracy and completeness by outside firms.  We also participate in user groups that audit each other, in an attempt to make sure that we are all collecting the same data in the same way, so that we are comparing apples to apples across the nation.

For 20+ years this data has been mostly looked at by students and physicians, but the last couple of years some of this data has been coming to light in public places.  Because of the reliability of the data, Insurers are using this data to determine the quality of programs, and then recommending good programs to their clients.  And now, Consumer Reports is also using this data to report directly to the public (YOU!) so that you can choose the best programs for your needs.  Here are a couple of recent news items that demonstrate the work that our team puts out.




Be informed!!