DFHWC Foundation Blog: Data-driven community impact

Blog by Jen Miff, President of the DFW Hospital Council Foundation

At the DFW Hospital Council (DFWHC) Foundation, we focus on a wide variety of research and educational programs to benefit hospital members and the community. Our team is usually working on projects involving patient safety, quality, workforce and community health.

Arching across these efforts is the primary constant of the DFWHC Foundation – our North Texas Healthcare Information & Quality Collaborative (NTHIQC). Spanning close to 20 years, this data asset has proven to be invaluable to hospitals and their research teams. It’s an important tool for our educational partners seeking to understand patient outcomes in North Texas.

Beyond the obvious business intelligence use for hospitals, NTHIQC has been leveraged for readmissions analysis, ED utilization, domestic violence reviews, behavioral health, telemedicine, CHNA support and understanding the social determinants of health. The NTHIQC data also supports clinical research to study the long-term impacts of COVID-19.

Our data asset is quite unique in the U.S., and we’re proud of that. It has depth, matching capabilities and timing. It also has market coverage when it comes to uncompensated care, Medicare and Medicaid, which are typically lacking in commercially available datasets for purchase.

We hosted our 5th Annual IQSC Data Summit on November 3-4, with the event focusing on a diverse set of data analytics topics. We’d like to thank our esteemed speakers. Their topics included system evolutions due to the pandemic; the importance of tracking opioid use; executive dashboards; the value of social determinants; and interdisciplinary cooperation to improve health outcomes.

I was so impressed with how our speakers addressed the power and challenges of data. Balance is critical as we seek to leverage data to transform both our work and our communities.

We want to thank our members for their continued support of this incredible regional resource and for their ongoing sharing and collaboration. We are proud to be your data stewards as we continue to grow both our capabilities and our partnerships to better leverage this incredible regional data asset.