The Center for Healthcare Analytics & Improvement (CHAI) offers programs to overcome the challenges of improving health systems' key strategic metrics. These programs are designed to help top performers increase their lead, middle performers get to the top and poor performers jump-start their improvement efforts.

Improvement Outsourced

Get better results with less cost. We provide any or all of the improvement process items listed below to your health system.

Format: varies
Cost: varies based on the number and frequency of items

• Produce and distribute monthly balanced scorecards (up to 20 / month)
• Create and present monthly insights based on analysis of balanced scorecards, discussions with key stakeholders and best practices
• Once a month mentorship meetings of health system analysts about the interpretation of data and the development of insights
• Once a month improvement leadership meetings to track progress, discuss barriers and determine the next steps in improvement opportunities
• Attendance at key improvement meetings
• Facilitate improvement committees, including building agendas and minutes, providing necessary data and ensuring follow-up

Improvement Alliance

Combines CHAI offerings into a comprehensive, 1-year program starting January 1 or July 1.

Format: In-person and virtual
Cost: $25,000 per year

1. One in-person visit by Steve Meurer that includes:
   • 1.5-hour data insights presentations to all health system leaders for one designated hospital designed to understand opportunities and provide a path to improvement using already available data
   • 1.5-hour SPLICE* survey assessment and discussion for your system detailing opportunities and best practices in the structure, process, leadership, insights, change and engagement aspects of improvement
     • Any travel expenses are covered by the yearly fee to the program
     • Data insight presentations can be provided to additional hospitals in the system for a fee of $3,000 per hospital
2. Quarterly Dashboards for one designated hospital in your system
   • One-page dashboard with mortality, length of stay, direct cost, readmissions, excess days, case mix index and a harm index
     • Compared to alliance participants and other hospitals of similar size
     • Includes bullet point opportunities and insights
   • Quarterly Dashboards can be provided to additional system hospitals for a fee of $3,000 per hospital
3. Three virtual meetings with your improvement leader to go over dashboard results, discuss insights and detail best practices (the 4th interaction will be the on-site described in #1 above)
4. Complimentary mentoring of one senior analyst by Steve Meurer, which includes five virtual 1-hour sessions on data nuances and tips and tricks for transforming information into insights and monthly follow-up discussions
5. A 2-hour meeting at the beginning of each calendar year to provide program details, content on SPLICE and current improvement efforts and results
6. Discount for one participant in the Leadership in Healthcare Improvement Certificate Program
7. Steve Meurer to provide 1-hour quality and safety education to the Quality and Safety Committee of the System Board of Directors

*SPLICE is structure, process, leadership, insights, change and engagement.  It is an extension of Avedis Donabedian’s structure-process-outcome model.  A survey has been built to measure these domains and is currently in pilot phase after a successful content validity study.

The Leadership, Excellence and ADvancement of Healthcare Improvement Certificate Program (LEAD)

Under development in partnership with the University of Toronto’s Centre for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (CQuIPS), with the first program to be held in mid-2025.

This program can help clinicians seeking to make healthcare improvement the focus of their scholarly activities and academic careers and operational improvement leaders interested in gaining advanced skills to drive improvement of key metrics in their hospital or health system.  

Program Goals & Objectives:

• Integrate Quality Improvement and Operational Excellence: Apply advanced principles and methodologies of quality improvement and operational excellence to design, implement, and sustain impactful changes in healthcare systems.
• Leverage Data for Healthcare Improvement: Use data effectively to identify priorities, plan interventions, and implement system-level changes aimed at enhancing patient care and operational outcomes.
• Collaborate and Engage Others in Healthcare Improvement: Develop the ability to engage and inspire diverse stakeholders, foster inclusive collaboration, and build consensus to drive successful improvement initiatives.
• Lead Impactful Change in Healthcare Systems: Cultivate essential leadership skills, including strategic thinking, adaptive leadership, and effective communication, to lead transformative changes in complex healthcare environments.
• Disseminate Healthcare Improvement Work for Maximal Impact: Conduct rigorous healthcare improvement initiatives and disseminate findings through peer-reviewed publications and presentations to achieve career advancement and (academic) promotion.

Healthcare Analytic Mentoring Program

Move analysts from providing data and information to presenting insights. This program provides analysts and analytic leaders with the capabilities needed to go beyond building dashboards and writing reports to interpreting and understanding an organization’s opportunities resulting in insights that will move to the changes needed for improvement.

Participants should be analysts with strong proficiency in Excel and a comparative benchmarking tool (Vizient’s Clinical Data Base is preferred) who provide data, dashboards, reports and information to leaders.

Format: Virtual
Cost: $6,000

This program consists of six 1-hour virtual sessions with Steve Meurer who has spent the last 17 years developing and presenting insights from comparative databases.  The sessions will include increasing the analyst’s capabilities in healthcare proficiency, understanding variation, curiosity, problem-solving and storytelling/presentation. There will be a focus on understanding and improving risk and resource adjustment, metric development and understanding mortality, length of stay, readmissions, complications and cost/case.  The sessions will result in the analyst gaining increased knowledge on the best path for their hospital’s improvement in rankings and programs using administrative data.

Insights Presentation

Understand your health system’s path to improved performance in rankings and programs based on administrative data.

Format: In person
Cost: $8,000 (includes all travel)

This in-person visit by Steve Meurer includes up to three 1.5-hour data insights presentations to clinical and administrative leaders at your health system providing recommendations on improving risk-adjusted mortality, length of stay, complications, cost, readmissions and excess days. The value of the insights presentation is in understanding why you are different and best practices that come from over 1,000 previous presentations to health system leaders. In addition, the insights provided will improve performance in all rankings and programs having to do with administrative data. There will be a 1-hour follow-up meeting with improvement leaders to discuss operationalizing recommendations.

SPLICE Assessment

Understand your health system’s opportunities to increase capabilities in improvement.

Format: In-person or virtual
Cost: $6,000

This 1.5-hour presentation and discussion will go over your hospital or health system results from a validated survey measuring improvement capabilities with a breakdown in each SPLICE domain: structure, process, leadership, insights, change and engagement. Best practices will be presented to determine the necessary steps in improving capabilities. This requires five employees to complete the online 40-item survey for each hospital. This can be done virtually or in person in combination with the insights presentation.

Board & Executive Education

Leverage your leaders to drive health system improvements

Format: In-person or virtual
Cost: In-person - $5,000 (travel covered by CHAI) or virtual - $3,000

This offering provides board & executive education in quality, safety and improvement in healthcare. This includes a 1.5 hour presentation that will go through the background and context for quality and safety in the American Healthcare System and strategies taken by leading organizations to drive improvements in their organization.