Systems and Methods of Clinical Tracking

Abstract

The clinical analytics platform automates the capture, extraction, and reporting of data required for certain quality measures, provides real-time clinical surveillance, clinical dashboards, tracking lists, and alerts for specific, high-priority conditions, and offers dynamic, ad-hoc quality reporting capabilities. The clinical informatics platform may include a data extraction facility that gathers clinical data from numerous sources, a data mapping facility that identifies and maps key data elements and links data over time, a data normalization facility to normalize the clinical data and, optionally, de-identify the data, a flexible data warehouse for storing raw clinical data or longitudinal patient data, a clinical analytics facility for data mining, analytic model building, patient risk identification, benchmarking, performing quality assurance, and patient tracking, and a graphical user interface for presenting clinical analytics in an actionable format. The clinical informatics platform may enable a method of clinical tracking that includes analyzing the healthcare data to obtain at least one report, and presenting the report in a graphical user interface, wherein the report can be customized based on a criterion.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A method of clinical tracking, comprising:
 gathering healthcare data from a plurality of sources;   processing the healthcare data, wherein processing comprises identifying, mapping and normalizing healthcare data elements,   wherein the mapping comprises assigning data to a field of a database according to a hierarchically organized lexicon of healthcare data elements, wherein multiple data element entries in the lexicon are mapped to a single field for at least one field;   analyzing the healthcare data to obtain at least one report; and   presenting the report in a graphical user interface, wherein the report can be customized based on a criterion.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the report identifies at least one risk relevant to at least one patient based at least in part on the gathered healthcare data. 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the report comprises an alert relating to at least one risk associated with at least one patient based at least in part on the gathered healthcare data, such alert presented in at least one of an audible or visual manner. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the report comprises an alert identifying at least one patient care error and at least one recommendation for correcting such at least one error. 
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the report comprises instructions for the manner in which one or more healthcare providers are to provide care to one or more patients based at least in part on the gathered healthcare data. 
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the report identifies a disparity between the available healthcare resources and the patient needs identified based at least in part on the gathered healthcare data. 
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the report identifies a high-cost patient based at least in part on the gathered healthcare data. 
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein processing the healthcare data also comprises validating the healthcare data elements. 
     
     
         9 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the data are gathered on a periodic basis. 
     
     
         10 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the data are gathered on a real-time basis, the report comprises instructions for the manner in which one or more healthcare providers are to provide care to one or more patients based at least in part on the gathered healthcare data and the report is updated on a real-time basis. 
     
     
         11 . The method of  claim 10 , wherein the real-time basis is at least as frequent as every five minutes. 
     
     
         12 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the graphical user interface is presented via a software-as-a-service architecture. 
     
     
         13 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the report relates to at least one of a patient, a medical care protocol, an outcome, a demographic, a behavioral risk factor, a disease risk factor, a procedure, a therapeutic, a therapeutic over a given time period, a risk level, a cost, an admission information, a utilization, readmission information, mortality, and a complication. 
     
     
         12 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the criterion comprises at least one of a patient name, an issue, a physician, a location, a due by time for care or therapy, a risk level, a clinical measure, a procedure completed and an image taken. 
     
     
         13 . A method of optimizing a healthcare resource plan, comprising:
 gathering healthcare data relating to a plurality of patients from a plurality of sources, wherein the data are gathered on a periodic basis;   processing the healthcare data, wherein processing comprises identifying, mapping and normalizing healthcare data elements, wherein processing is repeated when new healthcare data are gathered,   wherein the mapping comprises assigning data to a field of a database according to a hierarchically organized lexicon of healthcare data elements, wherein multiple data element entries in the lexicon are mapped to a single field for at least one field;   analyzing the healthcare data to obtain at least one patient risk identification and patient tracking report, wherein analyzing is repeated when new healthcare data are gathered and processed; and   preparing a healthcare resource plan for care of the plurality of patients and optimizing the healthcare resource plan based on the data contained in the at least one patient risk identification and patient tracking report.   
     
     
         14 . The method of  claim 13 , wherein the periodic basis is in real-time. 
     
     
         15 . The method of  claim 14 , wherein the real-time basis is at least as frequent as every five minutes. 
     
     
         16 . The method of  claim 13 , wherein processing the healthcare data also comprises validating the healthcare data elements. 
     
     
         17 . The method of  claim 13 , further comprising, re-optimizing the healthcare resource plan when new healthcare data are gathered, processed, and analyzed. 
     
     
         18 . The method of  claim 13 , further comprising, re-optimizing the healthcare resource plan when a manual change is made to an element of the plan. 
     
     
         19 . The method of  claim 13 , wherein the tracking report relates to at least one of a patient, a medical care protocol, an outcome, a demographic, a behavioral risk factor, a disease risk factor, a procedure, a therapeutic, a therapeutic over a given time period, a risk level, a cost, an admission information, a utilization, readmission information, mortality, and a complication. 
     
     
         20 . The method of  claim 13 , wherein patients at risk are automatically detected by the analysis and an alert is generated identifying such patients. 
     
     
         21 . The method of  claim 13 , wherein high-cost patients are automatically detected by the analysis and an alert is generated identifying such patients. 
     
     
         22 . The method of  claim 13 , wherein the healthcare resource plan is presented in a graphical user interface via a software-as-a-service architecture.