Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic implements a culture of analytics to optimize laboratory testing

As medical technology evolves and medical care improves, life expectancy rises. In the U.S., healthcare providers are moving toward a value-based care model, which emphasizes preventative care to improve outcomes and lower overall costs. Today’s healthcare organizations must:

• Unify and manage all information from diverse sources into a single view to improve diagnosis, customize treatments and manage outcomes.
  
• Reduce preventable errors.
  
• Proactively identify and manage at risk situations and take immediate corrective action to minimize costs and eliminate negative outcomes.
  

In Rochester, Minnesota, the Mayo clinic is using analytics to inform their providers about what lab tests to order in an effort to reduce test over-utilization and healthcare costs.

Inefficient clinical laboratory test utilization can not only increase costs but can negatively impact patient safety and quality of care, according to Daniel Boettcher, senior programmer and analyst at the Mayo Clinic’s laboratory in Rochester, Minnesota.

The Mayo Clinic’s concerted effort to manage clinical lab test utilization focuses on provider ordering patterns to identify areas for improvement and to prevent providers from ordering tests that don’t benefit patients. They use analytics to recommend approaches for diagnoses of specific diseases, guide selection of the correct tests, and assist in the treatment and monitoring of patient care.

For all the facts, read the full Information Management article