Case Study: St. Cloud Hospital Centre Care Health System achieves 100% Heart Failure core-measures compliance with Truven Health Analytics' CareDiscovery® Concurrent Abstraction

Concurrent Abstraction Creates Opportunity to Achieve 100-Percent Compliance for Heart Failure Core Measures

St. Cloud Hospital, the largest healthcare facility in its region, had spent four years trying to improve publicly reported core measures but remained well behind peers—particularly on Heart Failure and Pneumonia measures. Of the indicators tracked, only Adult Smoking Cessation Advice had reached 100% compliance, highlighting a need for a more timely and effective process.

By implementing Truven Health Analytics’ Concurrent Abstraction module within CareDiscovery Quality Measures, staff began abstracting data while patients were still admitted so clinicians could correct misses in real time. The change nearly halved concurrent abstraction workload, cut retrospective abstraction from days to hours, improved clinician engagement, and delivered measurable gains: LVSF and ACEI/ARB for LVSD rose to 100%, discharge instructions increased from 80.27% to 86.82% (and continuing to rise), pneumococcal immunizations improved to 98.3%, and the hospital earned a 2011 Healthcare Advantage Award.

St. Cloud Hospital Centre Care Health System

Courtney Salzl

Clinical Utilization Specialist