ABSTRACT
Health outcomes that matter to patients, providers, and payors include reduction of; new disease, health complications, emergency or hospital visits, and mortality. Important data in terms of outcomes are frequently lacking such as readmission, surgical complications, and mortality due to siloed care fragmenting access to data. A solution to these challenges can be found in the learning health system approach in which researchers work side-by-side with clinical operations to collect and analyze observational data at the health system level and contribute curated data to research networks for study at higher levels of data aggregation. Dr. Lucy Savitz also stressed the importance of funding the research efforts, and one way to do that is through a negotiated financial investment in the learning health system portfolio by clinical operations departments. Risk sharing and capitated plans run by health systems have moved the financial analysis of healthcare closer to the clinical domain.
