Strata’s User Conference Mobilizes Over 2,400 Healthcare Leaders to Address Industry’s Most Pressing Financial Challenges

October 25, 2023

LIFT23: The Strata Users Virtual Summit unites industry leaders for three days of discussion and sharing of strategies to shape the future of healthcare financial planning

CHICAGO, Oct. 25, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Strata Decision Technology (Strata), a leader in the development of cloud-based financial planning, cost accounting, performance analytics and data solutions hosted over 2,400 attendees from Strata’s client network of more than 800 healthcare systems at LIFT23: The Strata Users Virtual Summit. As part of the three-day event hosted October 23 – 25, 2023, Strata also honored six leading healthcare organizations with its LEAP Award recognizing outstanding performance in the areas of finance and strategy.

The LIFT23 event highlights use cases and best practices for addressing the challenges facing healthcare provider organizations today, offering leadership panels, product demonstrations and industry thought leadership. This year’s event offered new tools and resources to tackle today’s industry challenges, including new data & intelligence solutions, lessons and insights from LEAP Award winners and peer-led CPE-accredited panels and sessions.

Tackling Today’s Toughest Challenges in Healthcare

As the nation’s hospitals and health systems continue to feel the financial impact of shifting demand, rising labor costs and shrinking margins, the three-day virtual event brings together finance leaders from across the country to empower one another with actionable ideas for today and share how they prepare for tomorrow.

“Our healthcare clients are facing a number of challenges, including workforce shortages, new competition, shifts in care settings and other margin pressures,” said John Martino, Strata’s Chief Executive Officer. “We are excited to offer this three-day event as an opportunity for our growing network of over 800 healthcare organizations to come together and discuss the strategies they’re using to address these challenges. Following our planned business combination with Syntellis Performance Solutions, Strata’s tools and services will unlock new ways for our clients to identify and leverage key insights to support their organization moving forward.”

New Data & Intelligence Track Equips Leaders with Tools for Intelligent Planning & Actionable Analysis

This year’s LIFT23 attendees had access to an all-new data and intelligence solutions track. This track focused on new capabilities derived from powerful data sets and analytics solutions, including Axiom™ Comparative Analytics, Axiom™ Market Opportunity Visualization and Axiom™ Market Opportunity Analysis.

Opening the data and intelligence track was Strata’s Chief Data and Intelligence Officer, Steve Wasson, who presented key findings from the special-edition Strata and Syntellis Performance Trends report released today. This extended report combines financial, operational, and claims data from hospitals and physician practices across the country. This special edition highlights continued increase in demand for outpatient care, high yet stable labor costs as contract labor utilization declines, and some, albeit limited uplift in operating margins as compared to 2022.

2023 LEAP Award Winners Announced at LIFT23

During the event, six leading healthcare organizations were recognized with Strata’s 2023 LEAP (Lead, Excel, Achieve and Progress) Award in recognition of outstanding financial and strategic performance for the benefit of the organization and the communities it serves.

The 2023 LEAP Award winners are:

• Integrated Delivery Networks: Catholic Health (Rockville Centre, NY)
• Community Hospitals: Mary Washington Healthcare (Fredericksburg, VA)
• Academic Medical Centers: UC Irvine Health (Irvine, CA)

Additionally, St. Luke’s University Health Network (Bethlehem, PA), Intermountain Health (Salt Lake City, UT) and Sentara Health (Norfolk, VA) were recognized as semi-finalists for demonstrated excellence in decision support, planning and performance, respectively.

Peer-led & CPE-Accredited Thought Leadership Sessions at LIFT23

A forum for healthcare leaders to share their experience and successful strategies related to financial planning, analytics and performance, the LIFT23 agenda included nearly 40 CPE-accredited sessions expertly led by almost 30 members of Strata’s client network. Charles Duhigg, award-winning New York Times reporter and bestselling author of The Power of Habit, delivered the Guest Keynote. Key sessions showcasing peer-tested best practices included:

• Hear From the Front Lines: Labor Strategies from Chief Nursing Officers – Panel Discussion with Texas Health Frisco, Nebraska Medical Center and Catholic Health Mercy Hospital
• Forecasting Best Practices: The Top Strategies from Across Our Network – Presented by Children’s Health (Dallas, TX) and Sentara Health
• Healthcare Trends & Innovation Strategies – Panel Discussion with Mass General Brigham and Intermountain Health
• Maintaining Momentum with Initiative Tracking – Presented by Northwestern Medicine, Essentia Health and Southern Illinois Healthcare

About Strata Decision Technology

Strata Decision Technology provides a cloud-based platform for software and service solutions to help healthcare providers better analyze, plan, and perform in support of caring for their community and reducing the cost of care. With the combination of Syntellis Performance Solutions’ Axiom solutions, approximately 800 healthcare organizations rely on Strata to provide their financial analytics, planning and performance solutions. Strata has been named the market leader for Business Decision Support for 17 consecutive years, and Syntellis’ Axiom solutions have maintained HFMA Peer Review designation for nearly a decade along with No. 1 rankings from Black Book Research for multiple years. By uniting these two industry leaders, Strata continues to deliver market-leading solutions and world-class service, with an increased focus on accelerating innovation. For more information, please go to www.stratadecision.com.