Acuity Index Method

The Acuity Index Method (AIM) is Iameter’s peer-reviewed, severity of illness system used to assess the clinical and cost efficiency outcomes of medical care for hospitalized patients and those associated with the hospital’s outpatient surgery areas.

Sherlock™

Sherlock is Iameter’s decision-support tool designed specifically to support dynamic, interactive analysis of AIM data. It effectively analyzes multiple levels of data for all inpatient diagnoses and procedures as well as outpatient surgery using easily interpreted graphic output. Iameter staff train designated hospital personnel to investigate the sources of clinical variations and potential inefficiencies using this unique data-mining tool.

Clinical Process Improvement Facilitation

Over the past decade, Iameter has developed its unique, experience-based, clinical process improvement (CPI) method that enhances the quality and cost efficiency outcomes of physicians’ practice patterns and hospitals’ service lines.

The common language with which physicians communicate is clinical data. Iameter’s physicians capitalize on this phenomenon as they interact with the hospital’s doctors using AIM’s severity-adjusted, patient-level information in conjunction with non-threatening educational techniques. This combination of education and clinical information produces experience-based, clinical process improvement at the physician and hospital service levels. The hospital’s physician leaders incorporate these techniques into their quality improvement activities to achieve quantifiable and sustained quality and efficiency enhancements.

Although many hospitals have attempted clinical pathways, the Iameter approach is superior for a number of reasons. Physician acceptance is achieved because:

A.     The clinical pathways are based on their own best-demonstrated practices, not on an externally generated set of “cook-book recipes”.

B.     Experience-based CPI concentrates on improving processes rather than on punitive “good doctor vs. bad doctor” approaches.

C.     Iameter physicians work with the hospitals’ medical leaders to apply these processes and facilitate physician-to-physician communications in clinical services.

D.     Iameter can supply chart-level data gathering templates that optimize the hospital’s Clinical Improvement Process.

Accreditation Support

In addition to supplying inpatient and outpatient quality and efficiency data for hospitals, Iameter has met the criteria for inclusion in the accreditation process and is included on The Joint Commission's list of acceptable systems. Iameter is committed to meeting future criteria established by The Joint Commission.

Iameter has successfully met the technical requirements and is approved to transmit data for the following ORYX® Hospital Core Measure Sets: Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI), Heart Failure (HF), Pneumonia (PN), Pregnancy & Related Conditions (PR), and Surgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP).

Additionally, Iameter has met the technical requirements and is approved to transmit data for the Hospital Based Inpatient Psychiatric Services (HBIPS) and Children's Asthma Care (CAC) Test Sets.

Clinical Indicator Panel

In addition to the hospital’s designated ORYX® clinical indicators, many purchasers and governmental agencies are requesting that hospitals report additional clinical indicators. Iameter can supply indicators of these types to the hospital and its designated third parties.

Outpatient Surgery Clinical Services

Building on the successes of the inpatient Clinical Process Improvement (CPI) program, Iameter has applied our methodologies with similar successes to the hospital’s outpatient surgery facilities. Similar in design to CPI, Iameter’s Outpatient Surgery Services will enable the hospital to monitor high volume areas and compare them to a national benchmark for resource use and outcomes.

Hospital Competitor analysis

The medical marketplace is becoming very competitive in most areas of the country. A hospital that desires to differentiate itself to third party payers and employers needs reliable data to compare its own performances across service lines with its competitor hospitals. Using severity-adjusted, publicly available data sets, Iameter profiles the hospital to determine the relative quality and efficiency positions of its service lines compared to designated hospitals within the marketplace.

Service Line Opportunity Analysis

The standard Iameter hospital data analysis identifies clinical areas where there are opportunities for the hospital to improve the quality and efficiencies of its clinical performance. But identifying is not quantifying, and in order to determine the magnitude of these financial opportunities, additional analyses are necessary. Iameter performs these analyses and incorporates the findings into the educational forums of the hospitals’ physicians and staff to capitalize on the identified economic opportunities. The analyses are then redone every 6 months for 2 years to insure the potentials have been realized.  

Documentation and Coding Enhancement Services  

A.  Documentation Overview:  Iameter analyzes one, two or three years of hospital data to determine if coding and/or documentation inadequacies are inappropriately decreasing the hospital’s DRG reimbursement rates or quality outcomes. The analysis employs comparisons of medical records coding and physicians’ documentation proficiencies against a national benchmark.

B.  Documentation Rx:  When the Sherlock analysis identifies opportunities for improved medical staff documentation in the Overview phase, the hospital may wish to engage Iameter as a participant in a physician education effort. This involves Iameter clinicians abstracting an appropriate number of records to document exact error and/or omissions, and then communicating the observed problems to the hospital’s physicians and medical records staff in an educational forum.

C.  Documentation and Coding Clinics: In some instances the Documentation Overview analysis may indicate that the hospital’s medical records coders may benefit from the assistance of professional coding experts to audit and enhance their coding practices. Iameter and its strategic partner of professional coding instructors provide this service in coordinated medical records and physician education workshops.  

Inpatient Physicians (Hospitalists) Data Analysis Services