ArborMetrix, Inc., a leading provider of cloud-based healthcare analytics solutions, today announced that the Urology Department of the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine is using its cloud-based RegistryMetrix analytics platform.
The UNC affiliates initially participating in the partnership include three urology centers in Chapel Hill and one each in Hillsborough and Burlington, NC. RegistryMetrix allows healthcare providers to use evidence-based medicine and clinical experiences to improve physician learning, the quality of care and patient outcomes.
"ArborMetrix's pioneering work with the Michigan Urological Surgery Improvement Collaborative (MUSIC) CQI offers an excellent roadmap for how clinical performance analytics improve the patient care experience and outcomes," said Matthew E. Nielsen, M.D., M.S., an Assistant Professor of Urology and the Director of Urologic Oncology at UNC. "Patients who rely on UNC's five urology centers will benefit greatly from the outstanding clinical care that this quality partnership will help create. As a teaching hospital, it will also enable us to leverage proven best practices to train, educate and develop the next generation of leaders and innovators in urological care."
The program's initial efforts will focus on:
- Optimizing radiographic staging for newly diagnosed prostate cancer patients
- Reducing prostate biopsy-related complications and improving strategies for repeat biopsy
- Improving patient outcomes after radical prostatectomy
- Enhancing patient-centered decision-making among men considering local therapy for early-stage prostate cancer
"While our initial focus will be on affiliated UNC sites, eventually we plan to actively reach out across the entire network of urology practices in North Carolina," said Raj S. Pruthi, M.D., Professor and Chair of Urology at the University of North Carolina. "We look forward to bringing providers together statewide around shared goals such as quality improvement, cost reduction and ultimately patient outcomes. Working with ArborMetrix, we will also have the ability to benchmark and share best practices among peers at other established CQIs such as the Michigan Urological Surgery Improvement Collaborative (MUSIC)."
Through the use of RegistryMetrix, UNC will be able to benchmark and identify best practices. RegistryMetrix collects data on patient demographics, cancer severity (including pathological details from needle biopsies), utilization and outcomes for radiographic staging studies, co-morbidities, and patterns of care for both local therapies (e.g., radical prostatectomy, radiation therapy) and systemic androgen deprivation therapy.
That information is analyzed to determine the performance of each urology practice in comparison to their peers. The partners will be able to conduct analyses designed to identify specific care components associated with better patient outcomes.
"We have been able to prove that multi-surgeon and multi-organization collaboration drives patient safety, affects utilization and delivers best practices. This helps improve outcomes while reducing costs to both the patient and the hospital," said Brett Furst, CEO of ArborMetrix. "We are excited that RegistryMetrix will be used to identify and share these best practices. This partnership will provide better clinical decision-making, reduce complications and improve outcomes. We look forward to working with UNC on this critical initiative."
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