Build or Buy? Managing the New Technology Decision Tree.

Technology plays a role in nearly every aspect of healthcare delivery. Health systems must continually invest in new and existing technology and analytics platforms to scale initiatives, enable innovation, and achieve interoperability to meet the needs and expectations of patients and clinicians while remaining focused on the organization's mission and strategic priorities. In this process, decision-makers must determine how to allocate technological resources to platforms that meet clinical and administrative needs while reducing the need for frequent replacement or reconfiguration. Advances in artificial intelligence and its capabilities add urgency and complexity to technology investment decisions. An important consideration during this process is when to build new technology infrastructure and when to partner with existing companies and buy technology solutions. This case study explores a major academic medical center's approach to that decision, including the factors that influenced it and the outcomes of two solutions that were developed in-house.

Leading a Healthcare Organization During a Period of Social Change: A Qualitative Study of Chief Executive Officers.

BACKGROUND: In recent years, organizational leaders have faced growing pressure to respond to social and political issues. Although previous research has examined the experiences of corporate CEOs engaging in these issues, less is known about the perspectives of healthcare leaders. OBJECTIVE: To explore the experiences of healthcare CEOs engaging in health-related social and political issues, with a specific focus on systemic racism and abortion policy. DESIGN: Qualitative study using semi-structured interviews from February to July 2023. PARTICIPANTS: CEOs of US-based hospitals or health systems. APPROACH: One-on-one interviews which were audio recorded, professionally transcribed, and analyzed using thematic analysis. KEY RESULTS: This study included 25 CEOs of US-based hospitals or health systems. Almost half were between ages 60 and 69 (12 [48%]), 19 identified as male (76%), and 20 identified as White (80%). Approximately half self-identified as Democrats (13 [55%]). Most hospitals and health systems were private non-profits (15 [60%]). The interviews organized around four domains: (1) Perspectives on their Role, (2) Factors Impacting Engagement, (3) Improving Engagement, and (4) Experiences Responding to Recent Polarizing Events. Within these four domains, nine themes emerged. CEOs described increasing pressure to engage and had mixed feelings about their role. They identified personal, organizational, and political factors that affect their engagement. CEOs identified strategies to measure the success of their engagement and also reflected on their experiences speaking out about systemic racism and abortion legislation. CONCLUSIONS: In this qualitative study, healthcare CEOs described mixed perspectives on their role engaging in social and political issues and identified several factors impacting engagement. CEOs cited few strategies to measure the success of their engagement. Given that healthcare leaders are increasingly asked to address policy debates, more work is needed to examine the role and impact of healthcare CEOs engaging in health-related social and political issues.

Addressing Structural Racism Using a Whole-Scale Planning Process in a Single Academic Center.

Purpose: The murder of George Floyd in 2020 prompted a national demand for cultural transformation to confront the systemic racism prevalent in the country. Academic medical centers were not exempt from this urgent call. This article evaluates the efficacy of a strategic process in fostering cultural transformation within an academic medical system. Methods: A whole-scale strategic planning process was implemented over 13 months, involving multiple working groups representing key stakeholders from each entity across the system, an anonymous survey, a communication plan, and a balanced scorecard to monitor progress. More than 5500 voices, 160 recommendations, 122 data gathering sessions, and town hall meetings contributed to the creation and implementation of vital action items and a strategic framework. The Diversity Engagement Survey (DES) was administered 18 months following the process launch. Results: Of the 45,554 employees, students, faculty, and trainees, 96.5% completed unconscious bias education within the fiscal year and 76% of action items, termed "Just Do Its," were completed. Mission, vision, values, and strategic priorities were crafted to serve as a framework for intermediate and long-term actions. The DES revealed improvement in the "respect" attribute of an inclusive culture, and 64% of respondents confirmed that action for cultural transformation is addressing racism both within and outside of the institution. Conclusion: Implementing a shared purpose, engaging multiple working groups representing key stakeholders, and empowerment of stakeholders to implement changes, in conjunction with the development of a strategic framework addressing structural racism, resulted in the completion of vital action items to initiate cultural change.

Determinants of hospital outcomes for patients with COVID-19 in the University of Pennsylvania Health System.

There is growing evidence that racial and ethnic minorities bear a disproportionate burden from COVID-19. Temporal changes in the pandemic epidemiology and diversity in the clinical course require careful study to identify determinants of poor outcomes. We analyzed 6255 hospitalized individuals with PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection from one of 5 hospitals in the University of Pennsylvania Health System between March 2020 and March 2021, using electronic health records to assess risk factors and outcomes through 8 weeks post-admission. Discharge, readmission and mortality outcomes were analyzed in a multi-state model with multivariable Cox models for each transition. Mortality varied markedly over time, with cumulative incidence (95% CI) 30 days post-admission of 19.1% (16.9, 21.3) in March-April 2020, 5.7% (4.2, 7.5) in July-October 2020 and 10.5% (9.1,12.0) in January-March 2021; 26% of deaths occurred after discharge. Average age (SD) at admission varied from 62.7 (17.6) to 54.8 (19.9) to 60.5 (18.1); mechanical ventilation use declined from 21.3% to 9-11%. Compared to Caucasian, Black race was associated with more severe disease at admission, higher rates of co-morbidities and residing in a low-income zip code. Between-race risk differences in mortality risk diminished in multivariable models; while admitting hospital, increasing age, admission early in the pandemic, and severe disease and low blood pressure at admission were associated with increased mortality hazard. Hispanic ethnicity was associated with fewer baseline co-morbidities and lower mortality hazard (0.57, 95% CI: 0.37, .087). Multi-state modeling allows for a unified framework to analyze multiple outcomes throughout the disease course. Morbidity and mortality for hospitalized COVID-19 patients varied over time but post-discharge mortality remained non-trivial. Black race was associated with more risk factors for morbidity and with treatment at hospitals with lower mortality. Multivariable models suggest there are not between-race differences in outcomes. Future work is needed to better understand the identified between-hospital differences in mortality.

How Penn Medicine Is Advancing Care Delivery to Meet More Patients' Needs.

SUMMARY: The University of Pennsylvania Health System was founded in 1993 as one of the nation's first integrated academic medical centers. Over the past 29 years, Penn Medicine has systematically built a care delivery system based on three core values: innovation, integration, and impact. The operating strategy is designed to meet the patient's needs in a traditional brick-and-mortar hospital as well as in an increasingly virtual world. Today's patient is demanding an omnichannel experience with superior outcomes. Although long discussed in healthcare, such a comprehensive, seamless patient experience is only possible when all four channels of care delivery-hospital, ambulatory, home, and virtual-are sustainably integrated to improve the health of the population through digital innovation and analytics.The COVID-19 pandemic forced healthcare systems around the world to pour resources into telemedicine and other telehealth tools. This shift is fueling a dramatic shift from a piecemeal digital strategy to a comprehensive approach to the digital world where increased communication among clinicians, caregivers, and patients can lead to improved outcomes at a lower cost.In this article, we present an illustrative case study focusing on two of four channels of care: the Pavilion at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, where the latest in digital innovation has been built into the walls of our most ambitious capital project to date, and Penn Medicine at Home, which provides home care services, home infusion, and hospice care to patients throughout the region. The new $1.6 billion Pavilion and its technological updates have been seamlessly woven into the longstanding Penn Medicine at Home program. As a system, we did this by learning from both the victories and the setbacks to design for a future of healthcare we could once only imagine.

Learning from local to global: An efficient distributed algorithm for modeling time-to-event data.

OBJECTIVE: We developed and evaluated a privacy-preserving One-shot Distributed Algorithm to fit a multicenter Cox proportional hazards model (ODAC) without sharing patient-level information across sites. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Using patient-level data from a single site combined with only aggregated information from other sites, we constructed a surrogate likelihood function, approximating the Cox partial likelihood function obtained using patient-level data from all sites. By maximizing the surrogate likelihood function, each site obtained a local estimate of the model parameter, and the ODAC estimator was constructed as a weighted average of all the local estimates. We evaluated the performance of ODAC with (1) a simulation study and (2) a real-world use case study using 4 datasets from the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics network. RESULTS: On the one hand, our simulation study showed that ODAC provided estimates nearly the same as the estimator obtained by analyzing, in a single dataset, the combined patient-level data from all sites (ie, the pooled estimator). The relative bias was <0.1% across all scenarios. The accuracy of ODAC remained high across different sample sizes and event rates. On the other hand, the meta-analysis estimator, which was obtained by the inverse variance weighted average of the site-specific estimates, had substantial bias when the event rate is <5%, with the relative bias reaching 20% when the event rate is 1%. In the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics network application, the ODAC estimates have a relative bias <5% for 15 out of 16 log hazard ratios, whereas the meta-analysis estimates had substantially higher bias than ODAC. CONCLUSIONS: ODAC is a privacy-preserving and noniterative method for implementing time-to-event analyses across multiple sites. It provides estimates on par with the pooled estimator and substantially outperforms the meta-analysis estimator when the event is uncommon, making it extremely suitable for studying rare events and diseases in a distributed manner.

Self-Direction of Home and Community-Based Services in the Time of COVID-19.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, nursing homes and assisted living facilities have accounted for over 20% of all infections, adult day care and other congregate sites have closed, and traditional home care agencies are facing staff shortages. In this environment, self-direction of home and community-based services, where the participant can hire their own staff and manage a budget that can be used for a broad range of goods and services including home modifications and assistive devices, is seen as a promising intervention. Using self-direction participants can minimize the number of people who enter their homes and pay close family and friends who were already providing many hours of informal care, and now may be unemployed. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services is encouraging this approach. This commentary presents information on how states have responded using the new CMS Toolkit by expanding who can be a paid caregiver, increasing budgets and broadening the kinds of items that can be purchased with budgets to include items like personal protective equipment and supports for telehealth. This Commentary concludes with policy and research questions regarding how the delivery of long-term services and supports (LTSS) may change as the world returns to"normal".

Service Utilization Before and After Self-Direction: A Quasi-experimental Difference-in-Differences Analysis of Utah's Mental Health Access to Recovery Program.

Mental health self-direction involves participant control of an individualized budget to support recovery and wellness goals. This quasi-experimental study examined whether self-direction is associated with changes in service utilization. The study involved 2 years of administrative data for 94 self-directing participants and a matched comparison group of 529 non-participants with similar observed characteristics. Difference-in-differences were examined using four regression models predicting changes in four service utilization categories. Self-directing participants had greater increases in outpatient and rehabilitation services than the non-self-directing group, controlling for relevant covariates. There were no between-group differences in residential and emergency service utilization.

Difference Between Users and Nonusers of a Patient Portal in Health Behaviors and Outcomes: Retrospective Cohort Study.

BACKGROUND: Patient portals are frequently used in modern health care systems as an engagement and communication tool. An increased focus on the potential value of these communication channels to improve health outcomes is warranted. OBJECTIVE: This paper aimed to quantify the impact of portal use on patients' preventive health behavior and chronic health outcomes. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective, observational cohort study of 10,000 patients aged 50 years or older who were treated at the University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS) from September 1, 2014, to October 31, 2016. The data were sourced from the UPHS electronic health records. We investigated the association between patient portal use and patients' preventive health behaviors or chronic health outcomes, controlling for confounders using a novel cardinality matching approach based on propensity scoring and a subsequent bootstrapping method to estimate the variance of association estimates. RESULTS: Patient-level characteristics differed substantially between portal users, comprising approximately 59.32% (5932/10000) of the cohort, and nonusers. On average, users were more likely to be younger (63.46 years for users vs 66.08 years for nonusers), white (72.77% [4317/5932] for users vs 52.58% [2139/4068] for nonusers), have commercial insurance (60.99% [3618/5932] for users vs 40.12% [1632/4068] for nonusers), and have higher annual incomes (US $74,172/year for users vs US $62,940/year for nonusers). Even after adjusting for these potential confounders, patient portal use had a positive and clinically meaningful impact on patients' preventive health behaviors but not on chronic health outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: This paper contributes to the understanding of the impact of patient portal use on health outcomes and is the first study to identify a meaningful subgroup of patients' health behaviors that improved with portal use. These findings may encourage providers to promote portal use to improve patients' preventive health behaviors.

The Tasks and Characteristics of Supportive Support Brokers.

In the United States, under the Cash and Counseling or budget authority model of self-directed personal assistance where the participant manages his or her own services and supports, the Support Broker role was established to assist and coach the participant. The support broker role grew out of a person-centered planning process where focus groups and surveys helped ascertain what potential participants wanted to help them establish a self-directed alternative. But, despite this role being described in policy guidance from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid, little research has been conducted examining the functions, activities and usefulness of this position. This study draws on 76 ethnographic case studies with early Cash and Counseling participants, examines what participants and their caregivers actually saw the support broker doing, and looks at what the participants found helpful and less than helpful. Participants and family caregivers saw support broker duties as falling into four areas: Coaching, Problem Solving, Advocacy and Monitoring. Equally important was how the support broker performed these duties. Key aspects of quality included: Familiarity, Supportive Relationship, Proactive Engagement, Responsiveness, Knowledge and Cultural Friendliness. These findings can provide the basis for establishing quality indicators for self-direction.

Online Ratings of the Patient Experience: Emergency Departments Versus Urgent Care Centers.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: Individuals increasingly use online rating platforms to rate and review hospitals. We seek to describe and compare publicly available online review content and ratings of emergency departments (EDs) and urgent care centers. METHODS: We analyzed Yelp reviews of EDs and urgent care centers to identify topics most correlated with 1- and 5-star ratings. Latent Dirichlet Allocation, a method of identifying groups of co-occurring words in narrative text, was used to identify and label 25 topics across 1- and 5-star reviews of urgent care centers and EDs. Differential Language Analysis was then used to measure the correlation of these topics with 1- and 5-star reviews for urgent care centers and EDs. RESULTS: We analyzed 100,949 Yelp reviews, 16,447 from 1,566 EDs and 84,502 from 5,601 urgent care centers. There were significantly more 5-star urgent care center reviews (n=43,487; 51%) than 5-star ED reviews (n=4,437; 27%). Themes associated with 5-star reviews among EDs and urgent care centers were similar for comfort, professionalism, facilities, pediatric care, and staff interactions. Themes associated with 1-star reviews among EDs and urgent care centers were similar for communication, telephone experience, waiting, billing, pain management, and diagnostic testing. Themes unique to 5-star ED reviews included bedside manner, care for family members, and access. Themes unique to 5-star urgent care center reviews were based on recommendation and prescription refills. Themes unique to 1-star ED reviews were service and speed of care. Themes unique to 1-star urgent care center reviews were lack of confidence and reception experience. CONCLUSION: Understanding drivers for high and low online ratings and what patients value in their ED and urgent care center experiences offers insights for health systems and providers to improve acute care delivery. Patients' perspectives may become increasingly important as they seek care in the expanding urgent care markets.

Preparedness of representatives for people with dementia in a self-directed program.

Representatives enact their role as decision-making partners across the intersection of participant direction (PD) and dementia care. Self-rated preparedness for key dimensions of the role endorsed by a panel of experts in PD and dementia was assessed by telephone survey of 30 representatives of persons with dementia in a PD program. The sample (daughters 60%; Black 50%; rural 70%) was diverse in length of time in the role and additional responsibilities. They represented participants with moderate to advanced dementia and ≥ two additional chronic illnesses. Overall preparedness scores were in the pretty well to very well prepared range, with variation across dimensions and between individuals. Preparedness varied according to what has to be done day-to-day in dynamic or unpredictable situations, gauging decisional capacity, anticipating changing needs, ensuring safety, supporting a dementia-capable care team and negotiation. Stress was related to having a safety net of capable back-up supports and dementia care literacy. Areas of strength, individual variation and particular challenges along the trajectory of representing can guide development of support counselor interventions to provide representatives with tailored training and resources as they enable the benefits of PD for persons with dementia.

Interprofessional Simulations to Inform Perioperative Facility Planning and Design.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to report our experience with interprofessional simulations, executed in a mock-up of a proposed perioperative space, that were designed to elicit valuable end-user feedback on the design of the perioperative space. DESIGN: A styrofoam, life-sized model of a perioperative unit was constructed. Various medical professionals and support staff participated in interactive sessions, including workflow simulations, and provided feedback on the perioperative design. Based on participant feedback, the perioperative design was modified, and the styrofoam model was re-constructed. A second round of sessions was conducted, and the change in participant feedback was analyzed. SETTING: This study took place under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, within Penn Medicine. PARTICIPANTS: One-hundred and ninety-three medical professionals and front line operating room staff participated in the initial round of interactive sessions, and 134 participated in the second round (after re-construction). RESULTS: In the first round of simulations and interactive sessions, participants spent 560 hours engaging with the space. Modifications were then made to the perioperative design based on participant feedback, and a second round was conducted, in which participants spent 403 hours in the space. Floor plans for round 2 show significant changes compared with round 1, and mean design satisfaction scores for round 2 (3.78 ± 0.41) were significantly higher than for round 1 (3.61 ± 0.49) (p = 0.02). The quality of feedback was associated with the type of interactive session the user participated in. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that simulations and other interactive sessions, when executed in a mock-up of a proposed perioperative space, can elicit valuable end-user feedback that impacts the final design of the perioperative space and that would traditionally be difficult to obtain until after construction and move-in.

"It's Changed Everything": Voices of Veterans in the Veteran-Directed Home and Community Based Services Program.

The purpose of this study was to understand the value and impact of the Veteran-Directed Home and Community Based Services program (VD-HCBS) on Veterans' lives in their own voices. Focus groups and individual interviews by telephone were conducted to elicit participant perspectives on what was most meaningful, and what difference VD-HCBS made in their lives. Transcripts were analyzed using content analysis. The sample included 21 Veterans, with a mean age of 66±14, enrolled in VD-HCBS an average of 20.8 months. All were at risk of institutional placement based on their level of disability. Five major categories captured the information provided by participants: What a Difference Choice Makes; I'm a Person!; It's a Home-Saver; Coming Back to Life; and Keeping Me Healthy & Safe. Participants described the program as life changing. This study is the first time that Veterans themselves have identified the ways in which VD-HCBS impacted their lives, uncovering the mechanisms underlying positive outcomes. These categories revealed new ways of understanding VD-HCBS as an innovative approach to meeting the person-centered needs of Veterans wishing to remain at home, while experiencing quality care and leading meaningful lives, areas identified as priorities for improving long term services and supports.

"I'm just trying to cope for both of us": Challenges and supports of family caregivers in participant-directed programs.

Recently, national attention has focused on the needs of family caregivers providing complex chronic care, noting the necessity to better understand the scope of challenges they encounter. Although a robust body of literature exists about the scope of family caregiving, little is known specifically about the experiences and perspectives of family caregivers who support participant directed (PD) participants, particularly across the caregiving trajectory. Therefore, the aim of this qualitative descriptive study was to describe what family caregivers of individuals with developmental disabilities, physical disabilities, aging, or chronic health conditions identify as the challenges they experience as complex, and their perceptions of the effectiveness and gaps in family support resources in PD. Semi-structured interviews were audio-recorded with a purposive sample of caregivers. Transcribed interviews were analyzed using conventional content analysis. Fifty-four caregivers of individuals with a range of disabilities participated (age 34-78, M 59.9 ± 8.8; male 19%; spouse 17%, parent 61%). Six categories emerged from the analysis: contextualizing complexity, complexity in transitions, coping with complexity: advocacy & isolation, supportive support, unsupportive support, and systems challenges. Caregivers emphasized the interplay between unpredictability, transitions, and complexity and the interaction between the person receiving support, the caregiver's own situation, and the environment. Findings highlight the need, and provide a guide, for family assessment and for tailoring interventions matched to the profiles and self-identified challenges of families living with disability. Social workers can learn what families see as complex and what support broker behaviors families find helpful, and which not.