UPMC, Health Catalyst Partner to Measure the Real Cost of Healthcare

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and Health Catalyst will join their technologies and personnel in order to help health systems measure the real cost of healthcare delivery per patient. This cost per person analysis has proven difficult in the past because of a limited ability to share, store, and examine the data systematically.

The 2 companies will be combining UPMC’s activity-based cost management system and Health Catalyst’s Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) Infrastructure.

“This is a unique opportunity to join forces with one of the nation’s most advanced health systems to create a cost-improvement process and infrastructure that we believe will serve as a prototype to guide other health systems in developing their own data-driven cultures of proactive healthcare transformation,” Dan Burton, CEO of Health Catalyst, said in a statement.

UPMC will further develop Health Catalyst’s cost management system and implement their Late-Binding EDW to simplify the retrieval and aggregation of data from UPMC’s information systems. Health Catalyst, in turn, will license and commercialize the technology, content, and analytics from UPMC to advance patient are and lower overall costs.

“Thanks to our ability to compare outcomes and costs across a patient’s entire care experience—and by service line, hospital and physician—UPMC is identifying and adopting best practices that enhance quality while reducing spending, a convergence that is the ‘Holy Grail’ of healthcare,” Robert DeMichiei, executive vice president and chief financial officer of UPMC. “This strategic partnership with Health Catalyst will significantly accelerate that effort by leveraging the experience and know-how of both organizations to benefit UPMC’s patients and others across the country.”

UPMC has also signed similar partnerships with Partners HealthCare and Allina Health.