HMA Analytics: The right data. The right place. The right time.
There’s no shortage of data in healthcare. The key is to have access to the right data that is analyzed and translated into meaningful insights to support timely, effective decisions and actions. HMA’s analytics team can help clients with data aggregation, management, analysis and interpretation – the entire analytics life cycle. When insights drawn from data suggest a path for change and improvement, HMA’s clinical, policy, operations and finance experts can help clients take those critical next steps.
What We Do
We help our clients improve public health systems and initiatives and better understand the populations they serve, including the demographic, health status and other trends affecting these populations. Using these insights, HMA works with our clients to design care models, care management programs, and other interventions that address the healthcare and social service needs of the population.
Value-based care breaks down traditional healthcare delivery silos to focus on the total person and the total cost of care for that person. We help our clients:
- Estimate the impact of programs and services on total cost of care and service utilization
- Design and target programs and services
- Develop analytics to monitor and measure the impact of targeted programs and services
HMA works with healthcare providers to assess provider supply relative to demand and established benchmarks, and then assists in the optimization of the provider network and development of strategic partnerships. We also work with health plans to evaluate provider networks – including behavioral health providers, LTSS providers, and social service providers – against access requirements as well as population needs and trends. In addition, HMA offers operational and financial assessment of existing and potential contract terms and support with and in negotiations with payors.
HMA designs, executes and validates rigorous analyses of quality and outcomes pertaining to specific initiatives, interventions and programs. Our clients have used these analyses to align HEDIS and other quality improvement efforts with state priorities and regional and state benchmarks; refine outcome metrics to ensure alignment with value-based payment methodologies; and inform critical budget decisions.
HMA designs and models Medicaid financing and payment methodologies in compliance with federal rules and Medicaid policy goals, including access and quality improvement. Our team develops innovative payment methodologies for health plans, providers, ACOs, and suppliers that align financial incentives and promote value over volume.
Our team provides pre-contracting population assessment and benchmarking; identification of relevant performance targets; opportunity assessment/ROI estimation; development of strategies to enable ongoing visibility into contract-specific key performance metrics; and contract term analysis pre and post contract implementation.
HMA’s analytics team collaborates with subject matter experts from other HMA teams – behavioral health, clinical services, correctional health and opioid crisis response, among others – to design rigorous surveys that capture critical stakeholder input and yield statistically valid results.
Using a variety of publicly available, subscription-based, and client-provided data sources, HMA designs customized market analyses for health plans, providers, vendors and other clients. These analyses provide critical insights geared specifically to drive strategic growth, market entry and program design decisions. HMA can also design market models that allow for the evaluation of impacts to the market relative to the baseline based on changes to critical variables.
HMA’s analytics team works with public and private healthcare and social service organizations to review program efficacy and cost efficiency based on process, outcomes, costs and more, considering quantitative and/or qualitative data sources. HMA’s range of program evaluation services include evaluation design, data acquisition and analysis, design and implementation of qualitative data collection instruments (e.g., structured interviews, focus groups), interpretation of findings, and recommendations for action and next steps.
HMA’s analytics and information technology advisory services (ITAS) teams work with health plans, providers, government agencies and other clients to ensure they have the right data available in the right form at the right time. Analytics system design services encompass all data management and analytics processes including but not limited to:
- Identification and prioritization of key questions and metrics for which data and analytics capabilities are required;
- Data modeling and database design;
- Design of data extraction, transformation, curation and aggregation processes optimized to derive meaningful insights out of the data; and
- Identification of data sources and information systems technologies, evaluation of their suitability for use, and delineation of existing gaps in critical data and related infrastructure.
Data should be presented in ways that make the data more accessible, usable and compelling. HMA uses a variety of data presentation and visualization platforms to help our clients make better use of data, “tell their story” with data more effectively, and drive strategic and operational change. We develop and maintain dashboards and report packages for numerous clients.
Who We Help
The HMA analytics team has worked with a wide range of organizations, including:
- Government agencies
- Health plans
- Healthcare providers
- Community based organizations
- Foundations
- Advocacy organizations
We’ve helped numerous organizations, including the following, derive actionable insights from data:
AIDS Foundation of Chicago (AFC): The AFC engaged HMA to conduct a total cost of care analysis designed to measure the impact of the suite of outreach and care management services it was providing to Medicaid health plan members. The AFC began offering these services, known collectively as CommunityLinks, on the belief that they were instrumental to driving down total cost of care and improving the health of a critical segment of Medicaid members. HMA utilized its proprietary Total Cost of Care Modeler to compile encounter data from various Medicaid health plans. Based on that data, HMA then analyzed and compared baseline and post-intervention member-level and aggregate costs by category of service. AFC has utilized the results of HMA’s analysis to drive its care management contracting strategy and continuous improvements to the design of CommunityLinks services.
City of West Hollywood: HMA conducted an evaluation of an aging initiative using the Collective Impact Framework that included in-depth interviews, focus groups and surveys.
Large national Medicaid health plan: HMA created multiple survey instruments and a comprehensive readiness assessment tool across six domains to evaluate approximately 70 organizations against standard readiness criteria for behavioral health organizations to successfully take on value-based contracts. The assessment tool built for this project automatically correlated each organization’s score to its level of readiness and generated a report that included performance benchmarks as well as industry best-practice guidance to help organizations improve their readiness in each of the content domains.
Michigan League for Public Policy: HMA was engaged by the Michigan League for Public Policy to analyze the utilization of non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) utilization for the State of Michigan, including an analysis of utilization differences between managed care and fee-for-service populations. The analysis is being used to inform policy recommendations to the State of Michigan about optimizing and improving NEMT utilization.
San Francisco Department of Public Health: HMA conducted a patient and community needs assessment project of both active and inactive patients of the San Francisco Health Network (SFHN). Surveying efforts included a text survey to inactive patients to determine the reasons why they have not had a primary care visit in the previous 24 months. HMA also used the text survey technology to recruit inactive patients to attend patient focus groups that collected critical data to allow SFHN to better meet the needs of its inactive patient populations.
As a separate task for this project, HMA created a paper in-clinic survey along with a corresponding text survey to provide multiple data collection points for the active patient population. The SFHN used the information collected from active patients to better improve the overall clinic experience, institute a orientation program for new patients, update their physical clinics and expand the offerings of clinic services.
South Dakota Department of Social Services: HMA conducted a financial impact analysis to evaluate the impact of the state’s Medicaid Health Homes program on Medicaid costs. A separate analysis measured program participant outcomes against a series of CMS-specified metrics. Findings were used by the Medicaid agency and the legislature to inform programmatic and budget decisions for the program.
Tarrant County Blue Ribbon Commission: HMA was engaged by Tarrant County to 1) model future population healthcare needs for Tarrant County in specialty, primary care, acute care hospital beds, and psychiatric beds; 2) assess current healthcare delivery capacity and defined the gap against future needs, in terms of relative deficit and absolute deficit; and 3) present findings to the commissioners and stakeholders. These findings were used to guide next steps in the planning process, including use of bond funds for new capital investment.
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