Case Study: United States Healthcare Provider achieves measurable spine surgery outcomes and increased patient engagement with Health Catalyst

Building a Methodology to Evaluate Spine Surgery Outcomes Using Healthcare Analytics

United States Healthcare Provider, a large medical center facing high cost and variation in surgical spine care during a shift to value‑based payments, partnered with Health Catalyst to establish a methodology for measuring spine surgery effectiveness. The provider lacked standardized outcomes data and needed an enterprise data warehouse and analytics tools—Health Catalyst’s Late‑Binding™ Data Warehouse and the Population Analytics Advanced Application – Spine Module (with installation and implementation services) were chosen to support registry building, outcomes measurement and patient engagement.

Health Catalyst helped the organization form a multidisciplinary spine workgroup, build a spine registry, and integrate multiple quality‑of‑life instruments (PHQ‑2, PHQ‑9, ODI, NDI, with EQ‑5D planned). Patient QOL surveys are collected via the EMR patient portal on iPads and flow into the EDW for analysis in the Spine Module, enabling pre‑ and post‑surgery comparisons and linking clinical, financial (length of stay, readmissions) and satisfaction metrics. As a result, United States Healthcare Provider defined and built its registry, increased patient portal engagement, and gained measurable analytics to drive reduced variation, improved patient outcomes and better-informed surgical decision making with Health Catalyst.