Parkland Health & Hospital System announced the formation of the Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation (PCCI), a non-profit research and development corporation, which specializes in the development of software that helps clinicians predict patient problems before they occur.
PIECES is a clinical decision support software system that reviews electronic health records, “reads” physician’s notes, analyzes and assesses data, and helps the clinician identify patients that are potentially at high risk for an adverse event. This software offers a valuable portrait of patient risk that can be considered along with other factors by clinical decision makers.
In an environment where hospitals are subject to penalties for readmissions, the work of the PCCI has the potential to impact hospitals’ efforts in this area. This year, Parkland’s readmission penalty rates from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services were ten times below the national average of similar safety-net hospitals.
The development of PIECES and other research has been funded by more than $4.5 million in grants from institutions including the National Institutes of Health, The National Cancer Institute, and the W.W. Caruth, Jr. Foundation of the Communities Foundation of Texas. Grants from The Commonwealth Fund and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, in particular, are designed to make PIECES available to other U.S. hospitals.
The PCCI was recently asked by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation to advise the Pioneer Accountable Care Organizations (ACO). Texas Health Resources, one of the nation’s largest faith-based, nonprofit health systems, is collaborating with North Texas Specialty Physicians on one of the 32 Pioneer ACOs.
Source:
http://healthcare.dmagazine.com/2012/10/10/parkland-launches-center-for-clinical-innovation/