While working as an internist at an outpatient clinic, I would see physician performance reports that would tell me little more than if I was doing “good” or “bad.” There was no way to know how I compared to others. My colleagues, who also received these reports, and I didn’t trust the numbers either. In short, the reports were useless. Then, I discovered creating reports with a data warehouse. This addresses issues in six ways: 1. There is a cleaner data set and physicians don’t need to worry about fixing the data. 2. It addresses the “but my patients are different” argument. 3. The information is up-to-date. 4. The data is granular and detailed. 5. Physicians take ownership of the data because they are involved in the process. 6. Finally, it saves valuable time. When reports are created this way, physicians can make real change in their behavior and improve patient outcomes.

1. Physician Reporting:
The Secret to Useable,
Engaging Reports
— Dr. Ed Corbett

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Physician reporting
As a working health system
physician, the most frustrating
thing was not patients, IT, or
the EMR.
It was the physician reporting
and performance reports.
Most clinicians just add the
reports to the stack of other
papers on their desk and go
back to seeing patients.
There had to be a better way.

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Six Ways Physician Reporting Is
Made Better with a Data Warehouse
Enter the data warehouse,
where all the disparate IT
sources of an organization can
be transformed into a single
source of truth.
There are six specific ways
where the use of a data
warehouse improve physician
reporting has been used.

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Six Ways Physician Reporting Is
Made Better with a Data Warehouse
Cleaner Data Set
Physicians don’t need to
worry about fixing the data
after the report is created.
Systems and processes put
into a data warehouse can
address data quality issues,
from frontline data entry
errors to problems with free
text in EMRs.
1

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Six Ways Physician Reporting Is
Made Better with a Data Warehouse
Addresses the “my patients
are different” argument
By running a Pareto analysis
or Key Process Analysis with
the data warehouse and
adjusting for disease severity
can demonstrate how different
(or not different) a physician’s
patient population actually is.
2

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Six Ways Physician Reporting Is
Made Better with a Data Warehouse
Information is up-to-date
We can know how we
performed yesterday
rather than having to rely
on months-old data.
3

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Six Ways Physician Reporting Is
Made Better with a Data Warehouse
Data is granular
We can drill down to the
individual patient level to
see what care has been
provided.
No longer are reports a
three or six month
average of an entire
patient population.
4

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Six Ways Physician Reporting Is
Made Better with a Data Warehouse
Building a data warehouse
is an organization-wide
process involving physician
input and feedback from the
very start.
Dashboards and reporting
can be customized to the
data physicians need.
5 Physicians have data ownership

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Six Ways Physician Reporting Is
Made Better with a Data Warehouse
Having trustworthy, clinically
relevant data helps to identify
areas to improve patient care
and be more efficient.
It identifies gaps in care and
helps to change and improve
workflows to correct those
gaps.
6 Saves valuable physician time

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Reports that Change Behavior
and Improve Outcomes
When issues with trust and
ownership are addressed,
physicians become part of a
team that lets them own the
data and act.
The emphasis is on changing
process and behavior, rather
than just changing the numbers.

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Reports that Change Behavior
and Improve Outcomes
With a data warehouse pulling
in information from multiple
sources like the EMR, billing
data, claims data, and
scheduling, we could generate
an up-to-date list with more
confidence in the data.

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Empowering Physicians to
Provide Better Care
The long-term goal, of course, is
better patient care. Data can be
a powerful catalyst to changing
physician behavior and
improving clinical outcomes.
Reports generated out of a data
warehouse empower us to
know exactly how to change our
behavior and create a better
value for our patients.

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More about this topic
Three Ways Doctors Can Use Patient Data to Get Better Results
Dr. John Haughom, Senior Advisor
Healthcare Data Should Help Patients
Dr. Tommy Prewitt, HORNE LLP
A Physician’s Wake-up Call: How Data Saves Lives
Dr. Bryan Oshiro, Chief Medical Officer
7 Tips for Increasing Physician Engagement
Dr. Kevin Croston, North Memorial Health Care
Discovering Patterns in the Data (a free, on-demand webinar, transcript, and slides)
Dr. John Haughom, Senior Advisor
Link to original article for a more in-depth discussion.
Physician Reporting: The Secret to Useable, Engaging Reports

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For more information:
Download Healthcare: A Better Way.
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meaningful change on behalf of the patients
they serve.”
– John Haughom, MD, Senior Advisor, Health Catalyst

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Other Clinical Quality Improvement Resources
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Dr. Ed Corbett joined Health Catalyst in June 2014 as a medical officer. Prior to coming
to Health Catalyst he was a physician at Central Utah Clinic. He earned a degree in
French from Brigham Young University and earned his medical degree at the University
of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio.