A Performance Benchmarking Tool for Kidney Transplantation

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal addresses the need for objective hospital quality/ cost ranking tools that are relevant to patients' experiences and customizable to their individual conditions. This need is created by market changes where patients are increasingly being made aware of differences in quality between providers and pay higher portions of the total healthcare bill out of their pocket. Medicare, state governments, insurers and several private companies offer information on hospital quality and cost across many conditions and incorporating a variety of data, process and outcomes quality indicators. However, according to investors, bankers, industry analysts and entrepreneurs, comparison tools are still at an embryonic stage. They suffer from limited specificity, low resolution and conflicts of interest which in turn lead to patient confusion and perceptions that information is meaningless for decision making. PickCare(tm) is a hospital comparison tool that will address gaps that exist in current hospital ranking systems using advanced statistical and econometric models that have never been applied in this space. These models will: 1) Improve specificity through customization to patient factors that our analysis unearths are most important such as age and comorbidities; 2) Improve resolution by using an expanded history of risk factors; 3) Begin to build patient trust by detecting selection bias; 4) Present the results to patients in ways that are more meaningful and relevant to experiences they have had. The deliverable of Phase 1 will be a vertical prototype on kidney transplant programs that will integrate the analytical models with a web-based interface which will incorporate user feedback. Phase 2 will expand the functionality and conditions covered by the system in order to explore different paths to commercialization..