R.I. Quality Institute 2.0

RECOGNIZING OPPORTUNITIES: Knowing the Rhode Island Quality Institute's underlying technology had potential to improve health and save money in new ways, Alok Gupta has transformed its product offerings. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY
RECOGNIZING OPPORTUNITIES: Knowing the Rhode Island Quality Institute's underlying technology had potential to improve health and save money in new ways, Alok Gupta has transformed its product offerings. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY

CHIEF INFORMATION/ TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, NONPROFIT

“Health care delivery systems are moving at a rapid pace. Changes aren’t going to wait for us,” said Chief Operating Officer/Chief Information Officer Alok Gupta at the Rhode Island Quality Institute, a center of collaborative innovation focusing on improving health and health care quality, safety and value. “We have to be sure we’re ready to solve these challenges.”

Recognizing the immense value of RIQI’s technical infrastructure upon his May 2014 arrival, one that shares patient information between hospitals and physicians in real time, Gupta realized the alerts system had broader applications.

The original format, launched in November 2011, only permitted health care providers to access and share information on those patients enrolled in CurrentCare, a secure data repository. Gupta said, “We could use this infrastructure and create a parallel universe” to include all patients’ data, while adhering to HIPAA and state privacy laws. Soon three transformative, cost-saving services based on this premise will go live.

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RIQI’s expanded Care Management Alerts notify physicians when any of their patients are admitted to or discharged or transferred from a hospital.

A broad array of health providers have committed to Care Management Alerts, which RIQI planned to launch first with Integra in early May.

In addition, Gupta and his senior staff created the Care Management Dashboard, which aggregates all hospital alerts for a physician or group’s practice. “For RIQI to institute population health services… for their full panel of patients – that is an important innovation,” as are the Care Management Alerts, said Gupta. “They open up the pathway for us to offer real-time, actionable information and analytics to providers on all their patients.”

The Care Management Dashboard is, said Laura L. Adams, president and CEO of the nonprofit, “one of [RIQI’s] most in-demand products. [It] provides a pattern of admissions for a given patient so the care team can identify which patients would benefit from additional care management systems.” It’s predictive modeling will benefit patients personally and providers systemically, she said.

“Alerts make care coordination and delivery more efficient and timely … and reduce waste, duplication and efforts that can occur due to missing or delayed information,” Gupta said. “The system as a whole benefits … but the eventual benefit accrues to the patient … [with] improved quality and reduced costs.”

Gupta is leading RIQI’s initiative to develop what Adams calls “a single source of truth” – a statewide comprehensive Provider Directory that contains data – practice affiliations, demographic information, participation in various health and insurance plans, etc. It has, said Adams, “the potential to significantly reduce costs in the state,” as providers are expressing interest in discarding their inefficient and costly systems to instead purchase the directory’s data feed. The Provider Directory, which will go live in mid-July, will be a valuable tool for consumers, providers and payers, she said.

Gupta’s data-driven changes have led to internal changes as well. Now, RIQI’s board has a substantive set of metrics that Gupta developed to guide the board’s assessment and analysis of RIQI’s new strategic plan and its implementation, said Adams.

In the past, RIQI had focused more on building and less on delivering systems, said Gupta. We changed ourselves to become more customer-focused,” he said. “We had to change – inside-out – by looking at a consumer as a customer.”

A perfect example of that change is RIQI’s CurrentCare portal, which will allow patients to see their own health care data. These cultural changes came about gradually, said Gupta. Gupta’s team has secured more than $15 million in new federal grants and local service contracts, while reducing by 50 percent the cost of processing CurrentCare enrollments, said Adams.

RIQI’s growth is noteworthy. It had gross revenue in 2015 of $9.6 million, with 45 employees. RIQI projects employing 80 people and earning gross revenue of $13.3 million by the end of 2016. Gupta attributes this significant revenue bump to two factors: RIQI won four new grants last year; and projected new revenue from providers’ adopting renew services.

Gupta, who holds three master’s degrees, a doctorate and 20 patents, calls the Ocean State, given its small size, “a laboratory for ideas … [where] you can do things statewide.” •

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