Case Study: Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT achieves transparent, up-to-date public Health IT dashboards with SAS Business Analytics

ONC uses analytics to inform public on the health care system modernization

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) needed a fast, credible way to tell the story of a major health care modernization effort—including HITECH grant programs and $2 billion in funding—and to show up‑to‑date program performance to the public and grantees. ONC faced large, varied datasets and tight timelines to ramp up analytics, automate reporting, and provide actionable insights to dozens of Regional Extension Centers and other stakeholders.

Using SAS Business Analytics and SAS Enterprise BI Server, ONC built the public Health IT Dashboard: an interactive site of maps, charts and tables that lets users drill down by grantee, state, county, provider specialty and EHR adoption status without ingesting all data into a single database. The dashboard made ONC a one‑stop source for current, geospatially enabled health IT metrics, improved grantee performance and transparency, and helped providers, businesses and researchers track meaningful‑use progress and technology adoption trends.

Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT

Victor T. Lazzaro

Chief, Performance and Data Analytics Branch