Understanding Health Systems

Analyzing Health Systems Data

Health systems use data to identify opportunities to reduce costs, improve the quality of care, and increase the efficiency of care delivery. Understanding how data is used in decision making can help you advocate for business-based solution within your health system. 

Access the free 1-hour Analyzing Health Systems Data online course by clicking this link.

Learning Objectives:

After completing this course, you will be able to:

• Describe how health systems use data to identify opportunities to reduce costs, improve the quality of care, and increase the efficiency of care delivery
• Identify metrics that affect your compensation and performance assessment
• Summarize why it’s important to measure quality
• List sources of data within health care systems

• AMA Online Module: How Systems Thinking Applies to Health Care (free account required)
  Learning Objectives: At the end of this activity, you will be able to:
  • Define systems thinking
  • Explain the importance of systems thinking in clinical care
  • Identify how a health system fits the definition of a complex system
  • List the habits of systems-thinking health professionals and how they can be applied to improve clinical care

Supplemental Resources:

• Systems Thinking in the Healthcare Professions: A Guide for Educators and Clinicians (PDF)
  This monograph helps faculty educate healthcare professionals as systems thinkers who will appreciate, navigate, and improve the systems within which they care for patients and populations. The monograph provides a basic understanding of
  the metacognitive process of systems thinking and tools for design and assessment of educational activities, courses, and curricula. 
  

• AMA Online Module: What to Know About Health Care Delivery Systems (free account required)
  Learning objectives: At the end of this activity, you will be able to:
  • Identify the objectives, structures, processes, and outcomes of current health care systems in the United States
  • Describe the ideal outcomes of health care systems
  • Recognize how current health care systems are influenced by payment models and how this impacts patient care and the Triple Aim of better outcomes, improved patient experience, and lower costs and the Quadruple Aim that also works to ensure health care provider wellness and prevent burnout
  • Examine how improvement strategies, population management, and data analytics can close gaps in health care systems regarding the Triple and Quadruple Aims

• AMA Online Module: What Are the Components of Value-Based Care? (free account required)
  Learning Objectives: At the end of this activity, you will be able to:
  • Explain the concept of value and how it applies to health care
  • Summarize the current state of value in US health care
  • Describe the essential components of an ideal high-value health care system
  • Identify the key barriers to patient-centered, high-value health care
  • List strategies physicians can use to promote high-value care
    
    
• HCP Curriculum: Healthcare Costs and Payment Models PowerPoint and Facilitator's Guide
  Learning Objectives: At the end of this activity, you will be able to:
  • Explain the basics of health insurance and coverage
  • Demonstrate the complexity of health care costs and the large variation in out-of-pocket costs based on insurance status
  • Weigh the impact of insurance coverage and out-of-pocket costs with the ability to adhere to treatment recommendations
  • Explore how provider reimbursement models can affect delivery of high value care
  • Encourage physicians not to practice “one size fits all” medicine

Supplemental Resources

• Organization of the Health System in the United States 
  This chart from the Commonwealth Fund shows the flow of private and public funding in the US health care system.

Supplemental Resources:

• Systems Thinking in the Healthcare Professions: A Guide for Educators and Clinicians (PDF)
  This monograph developed by the George Washington University helps faculty educate healthcare professionals as systems thinkers who will appreciate, navigate, and improve the systems within which they care for patients and populations. The monograph provides a basic understanding of the metacognitive process of systems thinking and tools for design and assessment of educational activities, courses, and curricula. 
  
  
• Development of a Health Care Systems Curriculum
  This paper published in Advances in Medical Education in Practice describes a UME health systems curriculum using a problem-based learning approach.