Prista Corporation and Idaho Hospital Association Partner to Promote Advanced Clinical Intelligence Software in Idaho

Why the Healthcare Quadruple Aim Hasn’t (Yet) Hit the Bullseye

In 2014, the Triple Aim proposed by IHI in 2007 became the Quadruple Aim. This transition occurred because the objectives of the Triple Aim – better patient experiences, better population health, and lower costs – had been pursued mainly with what may have been an ill-conceived and dangerous assumption. Specifically, the dedication of clinicians and providers was assumed to be an inexhaustible resource of human initiative, technical expertise, and plain old labor.

This assumption was dangerous because significant driving forces in healthcare, such as administrators, investors, regulators, and vendors within the industry, held this assumption to be true. This view led to initiatives, compliance requirements, and work demands that frequently did not align strongly with those dedicated healthcare professionals’ motivations and goals yet asked more and more of them.

Finally, healthcare team well-being was added to create the vital concept of the Quadruple Aim. How much progress has been made in the eight years since?

Many have reported real progress on parts of the Quadruple Aim. Still, several things stand out. First, gains in one of the Aims sometimes come at a cost, even to the point of backsliding, in others. If the true goal is to optimize for all four Aims, why is this acceptable? Second, some efforts become parochial and limited in focus as though they are driven by more competitive or “better” thinking than the unified way of thinking that is required to serve the four aims. Third, some analysts consider operational efficiency a frequent enabler of competing goals, but honestly, efficiency has never been a core strength or serious pursuit in healthcare. While efficiency is usually the key to serving these competing goals, it may address the fourth Aim, the team’s well-being, the most. And that is why it becomes such a breakthrough for the Quadruple Aim because, with significant weakness in the fourth Aim, the other three are rarely, if ever, met.

Here is a simple but essential chain of thought. Performance Improvement, as the critical path toward the Quadruple Aim, needs to be deftly integrated into all the processes used to manage clinical care. Endless speeches, white papers, classes, and slogans are not enough to accomplish this. Instead, genuinely re-engineering the workflows and tools used is required. Contrary to this requirement, the typical approach to PI is to approach it as a distinct function governed by conceptual methodologies, which are only blueprints for manual human work. Any means of technical facilitation is usually homegrown, lacking standardization and any real efficiency, and so are pinpoint solutions serving only separate tasks in the process chain without real integration or collective advantage. In Enhancing healthcare efficiency to achieve the Quadruple Aim: an exploratory study published in BMC Research Notes, Bengt B. Arnetz et al. said, “To our knowledge, no previous intervention has primarily targeted efficiency for quality improvement.”

An advanced PI software workbench designed with the real goals in mind, not just the separate objectives’ tasks, and strong UI/UX (user interface and user experience) that is directly connected to the processes for tracking, analyzing, and investigating quality metrics and safety event reports, represents a significant and vital innovation that can have tremendous impacts on efficiency for the overall effort. It is certainly worth an exploratory look and, frankly, serious consideration, but many will not take that next step because it is very different from what they have “always done.” So maybe it’s time for a real break out to get to the Quadruple Aim.

Dr. Paul Barach Joins Prista Corporation as Chief Medical Officer and Senior Advisor

Dr. Barach joins Prista at a pivotal point in the company’s growth and will further enhance Prista’s leadership position in healthcare Performance Improvement.

Prista Corporation is proud to announce the appointment of Dr. Paul Barach as its new Chief Medical Officer and Senior Advisor. Dr. Barach brings a wealth of experience and expertise to the role and will play a crucial role in helping Prista continue to drive innovation and advancement in healthcare performance improvement.

In speaking of his role at Prista, Dr. Barach said, “I am excited to join the Prista team at an exciting time in the company’s growth and look forward to leveraging my extensive experience as a senior hospital executive, clinician, researcher, and entrepreneur to provide advice as they continue to look at new areas of growth.”

Prista Corporation is a leading provider of clinical intelligence and patient safety solutions. Prista offers a cutting-edge healthcare performance improvement platform called ActionCue Clinical Intelligence. ActionCue CI is designed to help healthcare providers make better informed and effective decisions by delivering actionable insights from data in a way that breaks down silos, increases collaboration, and thus facilitates true performance improvement. Prista’s platform has an extensive track record of improving patient outcomes and organizational performance, and Dr. Barach will play a key role in achieving this mission.

Dr. Barach is a nationally regarded anesthesiologist and expert in health systems improvement with extensive experience in leading national healthcare systems and overseeing quality, patient safety, clinical risk management, process improvement, human factors, and patient advocacy.

Dr. Barach has served as a critical care physician, Professor, Chief Medical Officer, and Chief Quality Officer at major academic medical centers. With a background in healthcare performance improvement and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by healthcare providers, Dr. Barach is perfectly placed to help drive Prista’s mission of delivering patient-centered, safe, and high-quality performance improvement directly addressing the Quadruple Aim.

“We are delighted to welcome Dr. Barach to the Prista team,” said Don Jarrell, President of Prista Corporation. “His expertise and passion for healthcare innovation and his experience as a respected thought leader in the healthcare field are a great addition to our team. Dr. Barach’s perspectives will be invaluable as we leverage our leadership position in healthcare performance improvement tools of our performance improvement workbench to transition into the next stage of explosive company growth and leadership in digital transformation in healthcare.”

About Prista Corporation: Prista’s mission is to combine wide-ranging healthcare experience and advanced human-centered design to bring digital transformation to all healthcare stakeholders and genuinely address the Quadruple Aim via its ActionCue Clinical Intelligence platform. Prista helps healthcare organizations of all types – large urban and rural hospitals, Short Term Acute Care Hospitals, Long Term Acute Care Hospitals, clinics, home health, behavioral health, and more – work toward becoming high-reliability organizations (HROs) and helps them develop a genuine Culture of Quality by innovating and optimizing the work processes of Quality, Safety, and Performance Improvement.

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CIHQ Interviews Prista Founders

Prista Corporation’s ActionCue® Clinical Intelligence is a new Endorsed Partner by Texas’s TORCH Management Services, Inc. (TMSI)

Prista Corporation, maker of ActionCue® Clinical Intelligence, a software platform for healthcare quality-safety and performance improvement is now an Endorsed Partner of TMSI, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals (TORCH).

Prista Corporation, an industry leader in clinical intelligence software for healthcare quality-safety and performance improvement, is proud to announce their latest endorsement – that of TORCH Management Services, Inc.

“Over the past 12 years, Prista has successfully deployed ActionCue CI to many hospitals in 33 states – including 25 in Texas alone. Gaining this important endorsement from TMSI further validates the key role ActionCue CI plays in facilitating continuous performance improvement in patient care and safety by providing actionable insights in real-time to healthcare leaders and their staffs. We look forward to working with TMSI/TORCH members to bring ActionCue CI to bear on solving their challenges,” said Don Jarrell, President of Prista Corporation.

“TMSI is pleased to welcome Prista Corporation as an Endorsed Partner,” said Vicki Pascasio, FACHE, President of TMSI.  Ms. Pascasio continued, “This endorsement recognizes that Prista’s ActionCue CI platform can assist our TORCH member hospitals in achieving their goals while adhering to excellent standards.  Like all our Endorsed Partners, Prista has gone through a thorough vetting process.”

About Prista Corporation: Prista’s mission is to help healthcare providers create and sustain a “Culture of Quality” in their organizations. In other words, an environment that drives continuous performance improvement in patient care and safety. Prista does this by developing innovative, intuitive, easy-to-use software that goes beyond traditional reporting to provide actionable insights in real-time. With Prista’s ActionCue CI platform, information is more readily available, more meaningful, and more actionably insightful for healthcare executives, managers, and clinical staff.

About TMSI: TORCH Management Services, Inc. is a subsidiary of the Texas Organization of Rural & Community Hospitals (TORCH) created for the purpose of having an organization that could engage with services on behalf of the TORCH membership.  TMSI provides value-added services to rural healthcare organizations, thereby enhancing their opportunities for success.

About TORCH: The Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals envisions rural Texas as having access to the highest quality health care.  To accomplish this, TORCH’s mission is to be the voice and principal advocate for rural and community hospitals in Texas and to provide leadership in addressing the special needs and issues of these hospitals. For more information, visit torchnet.org.