Case Study: Huntsville Hospital Health System improves care gap closure and value-based care readiness with IBM Watson Health

Huntsville Hospital Physician Network (Huntsville) leverages Watson Health ™ to ease its transition to value-based care

Huntsville Hospital Health System, a major hospital system in Alabama, needed to change how technology was used across its physician network to prepare for future value-based contracts and earn PCMH recognition. They faced challenges with their existing EMR, which made it difficult to run accurate reports and consistently document patient information, leading to fragmented data and an inability to proactively identify care gaps.

IBM implemented its Watson Health platform, specifically the Phytel suite of solutions, to help standardize data input, identify care gaps, and capture patient information from both inside and outside the network. The solution provided detailed reports for daily clinical huddles and patient summaries to track health trends. As a result, Huntsville significantly increased preventive care metrics: mammogram completions rose from 61% to 70% of eligible patients, diabetic foot exams increased from 50% to 60%, and diabetic eye exams jumped from 26% to 40%, better positioning them for value-based care.

Huntsville Hospital Health System

Amy Yearwood

RN, BSN, Clinical Care Coordinator