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92 92 THOUGHT LEADERSHIP How Providence is pushing population health beyond data and building comprehensive care strategies By Jackie Drees P opulation health capabilities span well beyond data aggregation, and at Ayin Health Solutions, a spinout of Renton, Wash.-based Providence, data insights driven from patient populations are used to help healthcare clients on a full-service scale, according to CEO Rhonda Medows, MD. e population health management company, which launched in De- cember 2018, leverages data analytics to help health systems, payers and employers develop more informative strategies to address gaps in care and pinpoint areas of their businesses that could be improved. Ayin primarily works with Medicaid, Medicare and dual-eligible populations. Dr. Medows, who also serves as president of population health management at Providence, said she and her team started the population health management company aer realizing they had suc- cess cross-analyzing data from vulnerable populations' health plans with claims, pharmacy and clinical data from EHRs. "We learned how to use some of the pieces from the health plan where we have proven successes in improving clinical quality patient ex- perience and reducing inappropriate utilization," Dr. Medows said. "en we marry that [data] up with our experience of the health plan working with our large provider delivery system, which is kind of like working with several different countries because each community and each region works a little bit different." Aer realizing how to make population health management strate- gies coincide with improving clinical quality, Providence expanded its services beyond its insurance plan Providence Plan Partners and formed Ayin. Defined as "all knowing and divine," Dr. Medows said Ayin strives to help healthcare organizations see beyond the multiple facets of population health and build a more comprehensive strategy. Here, Dr. Medows discusses Ayin's approach to distinguish itself in the world of population health and how the organization navigates privacy concerns relating to the use of patient data. Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length. Question: What does the term population health mean to you? Dr. Rhonda Medows: I've gone to conventions where I've seen a ton of people talk about their population health initiatives in a way that re- minds me of that old parable of the seven blind men standing around an elephant. ey all touch different parts of the elephant, and when asked to describe what an elephant is, they each describe the part they touched but don't describe the whole elephant. at's what it feels like when I hear people talking about population health. People describe a portion of the work under population health management but not the whole comprehensive. It's not enough to aggregate the client's data and give it back to them; you must help them figure out its use ahead of time, what solutions they're trying to achieve and then help them achieve their outcomes. It has to be full service, but the data is not the sole solution, there's so much more to it. Q: How did you develop a comprehensive meaning to population health at Ayin? RM: When you go in and Google search population health, you see a variety of companies that all offer different aspects of what we con- sider the full compendium of what population health management is. ere are people who do the analytics analysis of populations using different lenses. ere are people that sell you the data aggregation or some portion of the analytics that are needed to inform strategy. But with Ayin, we wanted to not only provide and inform the strategy for data analytics but also do the assessment for the organization trying to figure out what resources they have that could be married into a bigger, stronger strategy. Q: How do you help healthcare organizations grow their strategies based on population health insights? RM: We use a mixture of patient-related data — claims data, pharma- cy data, community health factors data and social history — that helps us inform planning not only for Providence and how caregivers take care of patients, but then through Ayin we can provide some of those same services where we use the advanced predictive analytics to begin to anticipate what a patient or a patient population might need. is informed planning covers everything from care management to social service resources, and it can also help clients who are in more of an employer space through benefits design. e population health data repositories and analytics and tools are separate from some of the traditional clinical data. ey represent a higher level of analytics that we use to assess what's going on in pop- ulations, either by payer groups, age-ranged conditions or geography. We then use the tools to get knowledge about on the population side so they can be turned around and funneled into actual individual pa- tients and families. Q: As healthcare continues to become more data centric, what guiding principles does your organization have in place to ensure that data — whether clinical, financial or social determinants of health — is used ethically? RM: e data that we use within Ayin has a single purpose: to im- prove patient health outcomes in a measurable way and to enhance the process behind making that happen. We are using, for the most part, de-identified aggregate data to inform us about population trends, health needs, utilization, pharmacy needs and resource needs in the community. We are very respectful of the information that we receive, collect and analyze by keeping it secure and keeping individ- ual information private. Because most of our analytics is done on our own proprietary system, the patient's individual information doesn't go outside our system. Q: How do you navigate patient privacy concerns? RM: We have formal rules and policies that we follow, but in addition to HIPAA and privacy and security rules, we have our own ethical standards, so to speak. We have corporate ethical standards on data sharing and when it can occur even within our own organization it- self. Not everybody needs to see all aspects of patient information be- cause not everybody's involved in that patient's care. Using the de-identified aggregate data helps inform us enough on trends. When we are ready to translate a population analysis into ac- tual care treatment and services for patients, then we are like HIPAA on steroids. Only the healthcare providers and service providers who