Press Releases Archives - Page 4 of 5 - Strata Decision Technology

CHICAGO, Jan. 31, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Strata Decision Technology (Strata), a pioneer and leader in the development of cloud-based financial planning, analytics and performance tools for healthcare, announced today that the company’s StrataJazz^® application earned top honors as the KLAS Category Leader for Business Decision Support in the 2020 Best in KLAS: Software and Services report, with a score of 90.6 out of 100.

This is the sixth consecutive year that StrataJazz has earned the coveted No. 1 spot in KLAS’s end-of-year ranking of healthcare IT software and services vendors. The annual Best in KLAS ratings are based on feedback from healthcare providers in tens of thousands of interviews conducted throughout the year. Top findings from this year’s report include:

97.9 percent of Strata customers say StrataJazz is “part of their long-term plans” – a score that is over 10 points higher than the average for business decision support solutions reviewed by KLAS
97.9 percent of Strata customers say they would buy StrataJazz again – a score that is over 20 points higher than the segment average

“Providers and payers demand better performance, usability, and interoperability from their vendor partners every year,” said Adam Gale, President of KLAS Research. “Best in KLAS winners set the standard of excellence in their market segment. Earning a Best in KLAS award should both excite and humble the recipients. It serves as a signal to providers that they should expect only the best from the winning vendors.”

The modular, cloud-based StrataJazz platform is currently used by over 1,000 hospitals and 200 healthcare delivery systems across the U.S., providing a “financial flywheel” to better plan, analyze and perform, driving margin to fuel their clinical mission.

Strata is seen as the standard in the market for advanced cost accounting, the core component of business decision support. Over $4.0 trillion is spent on healthcare in the United States every year with close to $2.0 trillion of that spend flowing through hospitals and health systems. Currently, fewer than 10 percent of hospitals and healthcare delivery systems have advanced cost accounting systems capable of providing accurate cost data across the continuum of care. A recent Strata survey found 90 percent of those responsible for the delivery of care don’t know the cost of it.

“We are incredibly proud to be the No. 1 in KLAS for the sixth consecutive year, and especially to be recognized again by our clients for our ability to help them get accurate, accessible and actionable information on cost,” said Dan Michelson, Chief Executive Officer of Strata. “Hospitals and healthcare delivery systems have been flying blind when it comes to understanding the cost of care. We feel very fortunate to be able to help our customers tackle this challenge as they seek to improve financial and clinical outcomes, driving more value for their providers, their organization and the communities that they serve.”

Strata recently partnered with The Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) to launch the HFMA-Strata L7 Cost Accounting Adoption Model™ (L7 Model), healthcare’s first roadmap to help healthcare providers access accurate cost data via the use of advanced cost accounting. Originally designed for 200 leading healthcare delivery systems, the L7 Model is now being open-sourced, making it available at no charge to all healthcare providers.

Comments from Customers

In determining its rankings, KLAS collects both quantitative and qualitative feedback from healthcare providers on the technologies they use. The following are selected, anonymous commentaries by Strata customers, reported by KLAS:

“It is very unusual to hear a sales pitch from a vendor and actually get the product that was described, but we got what was advertised and more. That is a real strength of the Strata Decision Technology system. I would rate the product as better than perfect if I could.”
“I would pick StrataJazz Decision Support a thousand more times. It is the right product, and the vendor relationship is right for us.”
“What Strata Decision Technology has done with decision support and cost accounting is really fantastic. Strata Decision Technology has also done really well with the drill-down capability that shows me my profitability or my contribution margin at a service line level. This capability also lets me see data from the DRG, the doctors, and the community technology preview. That tool is just amazing.”

The KLAS recognition marks the culmination of a year in which Strata and StrataJazz received multiple industry awards and recognition. Notably, the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) awarded StrataJazz its coveted “Peer Reviewed by HFMA^®” designation for the seventh consecutive year. The rigorous, 11-step process includes a Peer Review panel review composed of current Strata customers, prospects who have not made a purchase, and industry experts.

The full Best in KLAS report is available at www.klasresearch.com.

About KLAS

KLAS is a data-driven company on a mission to improve the world’s healthcare by enabling provider and payer voices to be heard and counted. Working with thousands of healthcare professionals, KLAS collects insights on software, services and medical equipment to deliver reports, trending data and statistical overviews. KLAS data is accurate, honest and impartial. The research directly reflects the voice of healthcare professionals and acts as a catalyst for improving vendor performance. To learn more about KLAS and the insights we provide, visit KLASresearch.com.

About Strata Decision Technology

Strata Decision Technology provides an innovative cloud-based financial analytics and performance platform that is used by healthcare providers for financial planning, decision support and continuous improvement. Founded in 1996, the Company’s customer base includes 1,000 hospitals and many of the largest and most influential healthcare delivery systems in the U.S. The Company’s StrataJazz^® application is a single integrated software-as-a-service platform that includes modules for capital planning, continuous improvement, contract modeling, cost accounting, cost management, decision support, financial forecasting, management reporting, operational budgeting and performance improvement and strategic planning. The Company’s headquarters are in Chicago, IL. For more information, please visit www.stratadecision.com.

Media contact:
Todd Stein
Todd Stein Communications
510-417-0612
[email protected]

CHICAGO, November 8, 2019 – Strata Decision Technology, a pioneer and leader in the development of cloud-based financial planning, analytics and performance tools for healthcare, has been awarded a Top Workplaces 2019 honor by The Chicago Tribune.

The Top Workplaces award spotlights private, public, nonprofit and government organizations that earn the highest ratings from their employees in a survey commissioned by the Chicago Tribune in partnership with research company Energage.

“We are truly honored to be recognized by the Tribune as one of Chicago’s top workplaces,” stated Heidi Farrell, Vice President of People Operations at Strata. “Our focus is simple – to give our team the opportunity to work on something they care about with people they care about.”

Strata joins a prestigious group of organizations that have earned the Chicago Top Workplaces award previously, including Salesforce.com, Hyatt Hotels, William Blair, Accenture and Strata customer Advocate Aurora Health.

“As a company, we’re tackling one of the biggest socio-economic problems of our time – the cost of healthcare,” said Dan Michelson, Chief Executive Officer of Strata. “Working with over 200 top health systems across the country, including many in the Chicago area such as Advocate Aurora Health, NorthShore University Health System and Northwestern Medicine, we’re in a position to make a difference not only in our community, but across the country. Our team is energized by our mission to help heal healthcare and empowered to make a meaningful impact.”

To learn more about what it’s like to work at Strata and what employees value most about the experience, visit their careers page.

About Strata Decision Technology
Strata Decision Technology provides a cloud-based planning, analytics and performance platform that is used by healthcare providers for financial planning, decision support and continuous improvement, helping hospitals and healthcare systems bend the cost curve and drive margin to fuel their clinical mission. Founded in 1996, the Company’s customer base includes over 1,000 hospitals and many of the largest and most influential healthcare delivery systems in the U.S. The Company’s headquarters are located in Chicago, IL. For more information, please visit www.stratadecision.com.

About Energage, LLC
Headquartered in Exton, Pa., Energage is a leading provider of technology-based employee engagement tools that help leaders to unlock potential, inspire performance, and achieve amazing results within their organizations. The research partner behind the Top Workplaces program, Energage has surveyed more than 58,000 organizations representing well over 20 million employees in the United States.

Media contact:
Todd Stein
Todd Stein Communications
510-417-0612
[email protected]

CHICAGO, Oct. 24, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — A record 750 attendees from 110 healthcare delivery systems across the country came together this week for Lift19, the three-day Strata Decision Technology (Strata) user’s conference. Summit attendees heard from national centers of excellence that leverage Strata’s cloud-based StrataJazz^® platform, rated #1 in KLAS, to drive financial planning, analytics, and performance in support of their clinical mission.

Summit keynote speaker Robert Pearl, MD, former Chief Executive Officer of Kaiser Permanente’s medical group, and now a professor at Stanford University, shared the factors driving out-of-control costs in American healthcare that he highlighted in his bestseller, “Mistreated: Why We Think We’re Getting Good Health Care—and Why We’re Usually Wrong.” During the keynote, Michael Allen, the Chief Financial Officer of OSF Healthcare and board chair of the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA), outlined the steps that finance executives need to and can take right now, including moving away from the traditional ineffective approach to budgeting to a more advanced planning process as well as better leveraging data to drive action.

“America’s healthcare delivery systems are working hard to implement best practices to drive more value for their providers, their organization and the communities they serve,” said Dan Michelson, Chief Executive Officer of Strata. “This week we released StrataJazz OnePlan™ and StrataSphere™, two new breakthroughs and game changers for healthcare finance. And we heard ample evidence of the success of many organizations, including the achievements of two organizations that have driven meaningful improvements in value.”

VCU Health and Owensboro Health Win 2019 LEAP Awards
Strata announced the winners of the 2019 Strata Decision LEAP Award, VCU Health and Owensboro Health. The LEAP (Lead, Excel, Achieve, and Progress) Award recognizes healthcare organizations for outstanding performance in the areas of finance and strategy to benefit both their organization and the communities they serve. Past award winners include CHRISTUS Health, Legacy Health, Parrish Medical Center, Mission Health, Northwestern Medical Center, CGH Medical Center, and Aurora Health Care.

VCU Health is part of Virginia Commonwealth University, a major, urban public research university with national and international rankings in sponsored research. The VCU Health brand represents the VCU health sciences academic programs, the VCU Massey Cancer Center and the VCU Health System, which comprises VCU Medical Center, Community Memorial Hospital, Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU, MCV Physicians and Virginia Premier Health Plan. A Strata customer for 10 years, VCU Health was recognized for their work increasing the effectiveness of financial planning, driving accountability by managing performance, and streamlining capital planning, with results that include:

Reducing the time spent preparing a traditional budget by over 20,000 hours
Driving 97% compliance among department managers with action plans to address budgeting variances
Tracking 531 capital projects totaling over $900 million; and making cost data available across the entire continuum of care

“VCU Health is honored to be recognized as a Strata LEAP Award winner,” said Melinda Hancock, System Chief Administrative and Financial Officer of VCU Health System. “I am so proud of the progress we have made in making this change and creating buy-in to the new approach of Advanced Planning. I want to thank our team for their tremendous effort, which has left us well-positioned to continue our journey to be nimble and knowledgeable in our planning and resource utilization.”

Owensboro Health, based in Owensboro, KY, is a nonprofit health system serving 14 counties in Kentucky and Indiana. The system includes two hospitals, a 200-provider medical group, as well as numerous outpatient facilities and a cancer center. A Strata customer for 10 years, Owensboro Health is the first health system in the nation to achieve Level 7 on the HFMA-Strata L7™ Cost Accounting Adoption Model, healthcare’s first roadmap to help providers access accurate cost data via the use of advanced cost accounting. Owensboro Health was recognized for their work improving the accuracy of cost accounting, strengthening payer negotiations and pricing, and reducing the cost of care delivery, with results including:

$450,000 saved per year by using decision support to identify an IV catheter that was exponentially more expensive but no more effective than a cheaper brand
Using what-if analysis for lesser-of clauses to identify charge increase opportunities of $1 million a year
Preventing a potential $12 million net loss through more accurate analysis of a payer’s proposed risk-based contract

“With the help of Strata, Owensboro Health has been able to move from a position of having interesting facts to having actionable data,” said John Hackbarth, System Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Owensboro Health. “We finally have data at a discreet level to show the comparative resource consumption profiles by providers. Additionally, we are able to identify costing of items compared to national median data to sharpen our focus on annual use levels by provider, payer, and service line. And we can now evaluate proposed changes to managed care contracts against the actual utilization rate for preceding periods and know the impact on net revenue before we agree to any contract adjustments. Most importantly, we can now depend on the data so when a provider questions the results, we have the ability to drill down and prove the numbers.”

Strata Launches New Solutions for Advanced Planning and Benchmarking
During the Summit, Strata announced the release of StrataSphere™ and StrataJazz OnePlan™.

StrataSphere leverages the company’s management of trillions of data points across more than 200 health systems and 1,100 hospitals to deliver advanced analytics, insights, benchmarks and industry-level financial management standards. All Strata customers can opt in to StrataSphere at no cost.

The OnePlan Advanced Planning platform simplifies and automates many of the most time-consuming and difficult elements of planning and budgeting, significantly reducing time and effort. It breaks down the silos that exist within the traditional planning process, combining operating budgeting, variance reporting, long range and capital planning together in a single, powerful financial planning platform. Cleveland Clinic was named Strata’s 2019 Development Partner of the Year for their assistance in the development of OnePlan to help drive greater value from their planning and budgeting processes.

Media contact:
Todd Stein
Todd Stein Communications
510-417-0612
[email protected]

CHICAGO, October 23, 2019 – Strata Decision Technology (Strata), a pioneer and leader in the development of cloud-based financial planning, analytics and performance tools for healthcare, today introduced StrataJazz^® OnePlan™, the first purpose-built advanced planning platform for hospitals to help address the major budget issues that they face. OnePlan provides a radically more efficient, accurate, agile and accountable approach to planning, providing hospitals and healthcare systems the ability to significantly improve their performance.

With this latest version of StrataJazz introduced this week at Strata’s Lift19 user conference, OnePlan addresses the archaic process many hospitals and health systems still use to budget and plan. Thousands of hours are spent creating a budget that is typically tens of millions of dollars off the mark and cast aside almost as soon as it is submitted. Rather than helping to control costs and build strategic alignment, the budget is viewed as a distraction, providing little to no value and even negatively impacting performance.

The typical large healthcare delivery system spends four to six months and up to 20,000 hours building their annual budget.
Senior executives and financial managers devote up to 30 percent of their overall time throughout the course of the year to this process.
66 percent of healthcare chief financial officers say their organization’s budget is irrelevant within the first three months due to built-in inaccuracies and the difficulty of adjusting the plan to changing conditions.

To help address this combination of issues, close to 50 percent of healthcare providers are now moving to Advanced Planning – a radically more effective approach to planning, budgeting, forecasting and managing expenses. One benefit many are targeting is a reduction of waste in the system. According to a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), there is close to $1 trillion in waste per year in U.S healthcare. With over 50 percent of the cost of U.S. healthcare coming through healthcare providers, they are in a unique position to help reduce waste and better steward resources.

“The most powerful tool any hospital has in controlling cost is ultimately their plan and budget. Unfortunately, many hospitals are still in the dark ages and budgeting and planning is not only a stunningly inefficient and ineffective process, it is also a source of enormous waste,” said Dan Michelson, Chief Executive Officer of Strata. “In the same way that FinTech applications such as online banking and tax preparation services have simplified complex processes for consumers, OnePlan is an Advanced Planning Platform that radically streamlines the budgeting and planning process for hospitals. Instead of burning cycles on creating a budget that doesn’t hit the mark and they don’t believe in, providers and administrators can now be accountable for improving performance and better stewarding the finite resources of their organization and their community.”

OnePlan simplifies and automates many of the most time-consuming and difficult elements of planning and budgeting, reducing time and effort by up to 50 percent. It breaks down the silos that exist within the traditional planning process, combining operating budgeting, variance reporting, long range and capital planning together in a single, powerful advanced planning platform.

A Planning Approach that is Accurate, Efficient, Agile and Accountable

As health systems continue to navigate fee-for-service while preparing for the next generation of full value-based payment, they must be able to plan and perform based not only on department verticals, but also horizontally across patient populations, service lines and payors. OnePlan is the first and only planning platform that enables organizations to plan and manage the full Income Statement on both a vertical and horizontal basis. As a result, OnePlan helps hospitals and health systems rapidly shift toward an Advanced Planning approach that is more efficient, accurate, agile and accountable.

Accurate—OnePlan provides new, advanced budgeting methods, such as Patient Activity Flexing, an approach that leverages accurate and detailed data in Strata’s cost accounting solution to automate and increase the accuracy of the budget process. As compared with a traditional flex budget, Patient Activity Flexing has proven to be significantly more accurate, revealing that up to 50 percent of budget variance can be attributed to the lack of accuracy in traditional budget models versus a true deviation from plan.
Efficient—With OnePlan, finance administrators can develop accurate projections and set targets in days rather than weeks. A 5-hospital health system based in the Southeast compared the results of a 5-month budget process developed in their old system to an automated projection developed in minutes with OnePlan. The OnePlan projection proved to be 10x more accurate than the budget they had built over 5 months and thousands of hours with the prior system.
Agile— No planning solution has ever made pivoting between traditional hierarchies and horizontal perspectives so simple, or even possible. Within minutes, analysts can translate the impact of service line strategies, patient utilization changes and shifts in payor mix across the full P&L and down to a granular, operational level. Sophisticated algorithms translate volume shifts modeled by the finance team into variable staffing and non-staffing expense targets at the department level. Department managers then have a simple interface to react to, adjust and itemize the fixed staffing and non-staffing expenses within their control.
Accountable — Following the planning process, targets seamlessly flow into the StrataJazz Management and Productivity Reporting modules to be compared against actual results. The monthly variance commentary process solidifies ownership of the budget and plan by front-line managers and quickly highlights areas where the organization is deviating from the plan, so corrective actions can be documented, taken and tracked.

A Single Platform Approach to Financial Planning

Over the last decade, healthcare providers have made significant investments in Electronic Health Records to provide a single clinical platform for their organization. Hospitals and health systems have now concluded that they need to get rid of the many disconnected applications that they use for the financial side of their organization and move to a similar platform approach. OnePlan provides a single platform approach:

Short and Long Term – Combines long-term planning and short-term budgeting with the ability to apply different lenses and levels of detail. Supports a rolling approach to planning with annual, monthly and/or quarterly budgeting.
Department and Service Line – Leverages patient-level data that already exists in the StrataJazz platform. Easily pivots to view P&L’s by entity, service line, physician, department, etc.
Finance and Cost Accounting – Aligns finance and cost accounting teams by leveraging cost data to drive and automate more of the budget process.
Planning and Performance Management – Provides the ability to adjust the plan as needed and seamlessly update targets, react to financial adversity and drive intervention immediately, as opposed to waiting for the next planning cycle.
Capital and Operational – A single model provides the ability to layer initiatives and the impact of capital projects on or off of the baseline plan.
Enterprise-wide Support – Encompasses budgeting for the entire organization, including provider, acute, post-acute, health plan, etc.
Manager to Executive-Level Accountability – Quickly identifies and escalates performance issues via Management Reporting to help understand root causes, drive corrective action, and track progress.

Advanced Planning Institute

As organizations look to understand more about Advanced Planning and learn from their peers, they can participate in the Advanced Planning Institute, supported by Strata. The Advanced Planning Institute brings together a network of organizations interested in improving planning through leveraging their collective experience as they journey towards Advanced Planning. For more information on the Advanced Planning Institute, please contact [email protected].

Join the OnePlan Webinar on Nov. 14

Click here to join the webinar on Thursday, November 14^th to better understand how StrataJazz OnePlan™ can help your organization achieve a more accurate, efficient, agile and accountable planning process.

About Strata Decision Technology

Strata Decision Technology provides a cloud-based planning, analytics and performance platform that is used by healthcare providers for financial planning, decision support and continuous improvement, helping hospitals and healthcare systems bend the cost curve and drive margin to fuel their clinical mission. Founded in 1996, the Company’s customer base includes over 1,000 hospitals and many of the largest and most influential healthcare delivery systems in the U.S. The Company’s headquarters are located in Chicago, IL. For more information, please visit www.stratadecision.com.

Media contact:
Todd Stein Communications
510-417-0612
[email protected]

CHICAGO, October 22, 2019 – Strata Decision Technology (Strata), a pioneer and leader in the development of cloud-based financial planning, analytics and performance tools for healthcare, today launched StrataSphere™, a unique data-sharing network and platform powered by machine learning leveraging the most comprehensive and granular dataset on the cost of healthcare.

Introduced today at Strata’s Lift19 user conference, StrataSphere will leverage trillions of data points across the 200 healthcare delivery systems and over 1,000 hospitals that use Strata’s cloud-based StrataJazz^® platform to deliver advanced analytics, insights, benchmarks and industry-level standards. The initial roll-out of StrataSphere included over 60 health systems serving more than 35 million patients representing approximately 10% of the provider spend in U.S. healthcare. It is now being made available to all Strata customers at no cost on an opt-in basis. The Strata customer network represents approximability 25% of the provider spend in U.S. healthcare.

The cost of U.S healthcare is approaching $4 trillion in 2019 with the level of waste in the system now estimated to be close to $1 trillion a year. With over 50% or close to $2 trillion in healthcare spend taking place in hospitals and physician practices, healthcare providers are in a unique position to help reduce waste and lower the cost of care.

“The biggest problem in healthcare and our nation’s economy is the rising cost of care. While there is an enormous amount of waste in the system, there is also a significant level of opportunity to drive improvements by collaborating and sharing data in a way that makes a difference,” said Dan Michelson, Chief Executive Officer of Strata. “StrataSphere is a breakthrough, providing hospitals and health systems the unique ability to leverage the best practices and insights of their peers, collaborate to conduct research to help bend the cost curve and better steward resources for their organization and the community that they serve.”

StrataSphere Leverages the Industry’s Deepest Dataset on the Cost of Care

StrataSphere utilizes the trillions of data points already in StrataJazz, the company’s cloud-based solution for financial planning, analytics and performance, and requires no additional data submission and no upfront mapping. Rated #1 in KLAS for Decision Support, Strata is recognized as the “gold standard” in healthcare for cost accounting. Leveraging the most advanced costing methodologies including Time-Driven Costing™ , Strata customers have the ability to understand cost and margins across episodes of care, service lines and patient populations throughout an entire delivery network including hospitals, physician groups and post-acute care. This level of detail on the actual cost of care, not charges or claims, is unique and provides a level of visibility into the direct resources that are utilized pinpointing opportunities to reduce variation, eliminate waste and improve quality.

StrataSphere provides cross-customer and cross-industry analytics along with advanced capabilities including:

Benchmarking of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Industry Insights and Comparative Analytics
Predictive Modeling
Development of Financial Standards

StrataSphere Addresses the Shortfalls of Other Comparative Benchmarking Tools

Existing comparative analytics and benchmarking solutions fall short in helping providers to understand and address their cost challenges. Many rely primarily on poorly vetted public datasets. This lack of detailed source data makes apples-to-apples benchmarking on the cost of care impossible. These systems also derive costs inaccurately, if at all, and often are driven by claims or charge-based data sets rather than the accurate, actionable and detailed cost information needed to identify waste and drive out cost. StrataSphere addresses each of these failures by delivering:

Actionable Data: StrataSphere’s data platform is unique based on its scale, level of granularity and rigorous data cleansing. Every line item and field is screened, scanned and validated using the latest machine learning tools. Data can be translated and analyzed simultaneously and identically across departments, patient populations, service lines, episodes and entity structures.
Access to Unique, Reliable, Contextual Data: One-hundred percent of the data used in StrataSphere is the identical source data that organizations are using to make day-to-day business decisions within StrataJazz.
Normalized and Standardized Data at the Line-Item Level: StrataSphere leverages machine learning, natural language processing, and predictive analytics to normalize, map and clean data across tens of billions of records and trillions of dollars of total spend. Cost components, general ledger, job code, patient charge and other line item-level data is available for deep analytics. StrataSphere integrates customer- and industry-level service line, episode, social determinants, clinical norms and other strategic and value-based analytical models.
Detailed Cost Data: StrataSphere makes use of detailed patient-level costing and can integrate all data sets used to achieve Level 7 on the HFMA-Strata L7 Cost Accounting Adoption Model (L7^®), with algorithmic models validated across Strata’s customer base.
Collaborative Testing Ground: StrataSphere can be used as a testing ground for an organization’s self-developed statistical models, or to simply answer questions emerging from their data.
Faster Research Results: For organizations that lack the volume or diversity of patients to produce statistically significant research results, StrataSphere provides a sizeable dataset for faster analytics and better decision making.

StrataSphere benchmarking and advanced visualization tools identify opportunities, trends, risks and threats that may not be visible when examining an organization’s own data with traditional tools. Uses range from productivity, operating ratios, cost comparisons, supplies, and investment, to fixed and variable costing. StrataSphere’s national data set enables predictive models that help CFOs to analyze future scenarios such as competing in value-based and capitated models and operating at Medicare reimbursement margins.

“As the U.S. healthcare system transitions to value-based payment models and to actively managing the total cost of care, provider organizations need a reliable, transparent and actionable means of benchmarking, identifying areas of waste and improving their financial performance,” said Steve Lefar, Executive Director of the StrataSphere initiative. “Health systems that lack access to data, how they compare to others and what they can do to bend the cost curve will really struggle to survive. We believe StrataSphere is a critical part of the answer.”

For Strata clients, there is no cost to join StrataSphere. Benchmarking, industry insights and access to the Strata Standards are all included.

About Strata Decision Technology

Media contact:

Todd Stein
Todd Stein Communications
510-417-0612
[email protected]

StrataJazz^® Solution for Healthcare Financial Planning, Decision Support and Performance Improvement Recognized for Overall Effectiveness, Quality, and Value

Chicago – Sept. 25, 2019 – Strata Decision Technology (Strata), a pioneer and leader in the development of cloud-based financial planning, analytics and performance tools for healthcare, has once again achieved the Healthcare Financial Management Association’s (HFMA) “Peer Reviewed by HFMA^®” designation following rigorous review of its StrataJazz^® application.

This is the seventh year in a row that Strata StrataJazz has earned the coveted designation from HFMA. Currently used by over 1,000 hospitals and 200 healthcare delivery systems across the U.S., StrataJazz is a single, modular, cloud-based platform that brings healthcare providers a “financial flywheel” to better plan, analyze and perform, driving margin to fuel their clinical mission.

“We are extremely proud to once again receive this important seal of approval from HFMA, the leading and largest healthcare finance association,” said Dan Michelson, Chief Executive Officer for Strata. “It’s especially gratifying that the number of our customers who would recommend us continues to be ahead of others and on a steady upward trajectory. That’s the best possible testament to the value that healthcare providers realize through both our solutions and our services.”

The HFMA community has more than 43,000 members, including healthcare finance leaders and professionals from hospitals and health systems, provider organizations, physician practices and payers. HFMA’s Peer Review process provides healthcare financial managers with an objective, third-party evaluation of business solutions used in the healthcare workplace. The rigorous, 11-step process includes a Peer Review panel review composed of current Strata customers, prospects who have not made a purchase, and industry experts.

The Peer Review status of StrataJazz and its performance claims are based on effectiveness, quality and usability, price, value, and customer and technical support. Key findings from the process include:

100 percent “agree” or “strongly agree” that StrataJazz has enhanced productivity; that it provides accurate data; that sales and technical support provide good service; and that product updates are easy to install or incorporate
96 percent “agree” or “strongly agree” that the application is easy to use (0% disagree)
92 percent of peers “agree” or “strongly agree” that they would recommend StrataJazz to colleagues (0% disagree)

“We’re pleased to have Strata Decision Technology renew their HFMA Peer Reviewed designation,” said HFMA President and CEO Joseph J. Fifer, FHFMA, CPA. “The HFMA Peer Review process assures our members, through a rigorous evaluation, that the reviewed healthcare business solution meets an objective, third-party assessment of overall effectiveness, quality, and value.”

About HFMA

The Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) is the nation’s premier membership organization for healthcare finance leaders. HFMA builds and supports coalitions with other healthcare associations and industry groups to achieve consensus on solutions for the challenges the U.S. healthcare system faces today. Working with a broad cross-section of stakeholders, HFMA identifies gaps throughout the healthcare delivery system and bridges them through the establishment and sharing of knowledge and best practices. We help healthcare stakeholders achieve optimal results by creating and providing education, analysis, and practical tools and solutions. Our mission is to lead the financial management of health care.

About Strata Decision Technology

CHICAGO, February 11, 2019 —The Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) and Strata Decision Technology (Strata) today launched the HFMA-Strata L7 Cost Accounting Adoption Model™ (L7 Model), healthcare’s first roadmap to help healthcare providers access accurate cost data via the use of advanced cost accounting. Originally designed for 200 leading healthcare delivery systems, the L7 Model is now being open-sourced, making it available at no charge to all healthcare providers.

Understanding the Cost Crisis in Healthcare and the Need for Advanced Cost Accounting

An estimated $3.6 trillion, or over $10,000 per person, is spent on healthcare in the United States every year, twice the average of comparable countries. However, a recent survey found 90 percent of those responsible for the delivery of care don’t know the cost of it. Currently, less than 10 percent of hospitals and healthcare delivery systems have advanced cost accounting systems capable of providing accurate cost data across the continuum of care. While hospitals and health systems represent roughly $1.8 trillion of the annual spend on U.S. healthcare, their average net operating margins have dropped below 3 percent, with close to 30 percent operating at a loss. The challenge they are faced with is how to reduce variation, waste, and inefficiency to invest in and improve care—without any access to trusted data on the cost of care. A 2013 Harvard Business Review article by Michael Porter and Thomas H. Lee shared the perspective that, “Without understanding the true costs of care for patient conditions, much less how costs are related to outcomes, health care organizations are flying blind in deciding how to improve processes and redesign care.”

The need to understand cost is becoming even more mission critical as the business model of healthcare continues to shift from fee-for-service to more capitated and risk-based payment models. Traditional healthcare cost accounting methods were not designed for value-based payment. The lack of trusted cost information is driving the rapid adoption of more advanced cost accounting applications that make cost data more accurate, accessible, and actionable. The ability to drill down into the costs associated with bundled services, specific patient groups, or practice patterns can help decision makers better understand variation and costs related to variation—and make changes that will improve value.

Introducing the HFMA-Strata L7 Cost Accounting Adoption Model

In response to an unmet need for strategic cost accounting guidance as the healthcare industry transitions to value-based payment and to actively managing the total cost of care, HFMA and Strata are collaborating to release the L7 Cost Accounting Adoption Model. Analogous to the way the HIMSS Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM) served as a roadmap for accessing better clinical data, the HFMA-Strata Cost Accounting Adoption Model will help providers access accurate and more actionable data on the cost of care.

The L7 Model will help hospitals and healthcare delivery systems measure the adoption and utilization of advanced cost accounting methods, including time-driven and activity-based costing. The model provides an industry standard for helping hospitals and healthcare delivery systems:

Assess their current cost accounting methodology, understand the level of accuracy of their cost data, and benchmark capabilities against peers, and
Create a roadmap for the actions required to ensure their cost accounting approach meets their strategic needs

“As hospitals and healthcare delivery systems move toward value-based payment structures, they will need to leverage cost accounting in a much more strategic fashion,” said HFMA President and CEO Joseph J. Fifer, FHFMA, CPA. “To effectively improve their cost accounting capabilities in a rapidly changing and complex setting, health systems need a roadmap to ensure their approach meets their strategic needs.”

Each level of the cost accounting model builds upon the prior level, deploying more extensive data sets and dynamic methodologies to help an organization increase the extensibility and accuracy of their cost data. As an organization moves up to the next level, more sophisticated costing processes and workflows are deployed, generating more meaningful and accurate output. The model also assesses current gaps in source system data to help standardize and automate data capture. At the base of the model are healthcare organizations with a basic cost accounting tool that deploys ratio of cost-to-charge (RCC) methods. An organization that is at Level 7 has expanded the use of time-driven costing to all clinical areas and engages clinicians with the cost data to help drive performance improvements.

“All healthcare providers recognize that understanding the cost of care is mission critical and that a clear set of standards related to cost accounting is a requirement,” stated Dan Michelson, CEO of Strata Decision Technology. “We feel privileged to be able to play a part in helping healthcare providers better understand the cost of care so they can use that data to reduce waste and invest in what matters most to the patients they serve and the care providers they support.”

Strata has earned top honors as the KLAS Category Leader for Business Decision Support and Cost Accounting for five consecutive years and recently authored the book, Margin + Mission: A Prescription for Curing Healthcare’s Cost Crisis.

Using the HFMA-Strata L7 Cost Accounting Adoption Model

Watch the webinar to review the structure of the L7 Cost Accounting Adoption Model and become familiar with the self-assessment tool. Hear the best practices for developing an L7 Roadmap.

To download a copy of the model and register for the webinar, please go here. You can also request a complimentary Cost Accounting Adoption Assessment to help your organization determine their current level and receive recommendations on building out a strategic roadmap.

About HFMA
The Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) is the nation’s premier membership organization for healthcare finance leaders. HFMA builds and supports coalitions with other healthcare associations and industry groups to achieve consensus on solutions for the challenges the U.S. healthcare system faces today. Working with a broad cross-section of stakeholders, HFMA identifies gaps throughout the healthcare delivery system and bridges them through the establishment and sharing of knowledge and best practices. The Association helps healthcare stakeholders achieve optimal results by creating and providing education, analysis, and practical tools and solutions. Its mission is to lead the financial management of health care.

About Strata Decision Technology

Strata Decision Technology provides an innovative cloud-based planning, analytics and performance platform that is used by healthcare providers for financial planning, decision support and continuous improvement. Founded in 1996, the Company’s customer base includes 1,000 hospitals and many of the largest and most influential healthcare delivery systems in the U.S. The Company’s StrataJazz^® application is a single integrated software platform that includes modules for strategic planning, capital planning, operational budgeting, management and productivity reporting, decision support and continuous improvement. The Company’s headquarters are in Chicago. For more information, please visit www.stratadecision.com.

Contacts:

HFMA: Karen Thomas, [email protected], 708.492.3377

Strata Decision Technology: Christie Markiewicz, [email protected], 217.531.2604

CHICAGO, IL, January 31, 2019 — Strata Decision Technology (Strata), a pioneer and leader in the development of cloud-based financial planning, analytics and performance tools for healthcare, announced today that StrataJazz^® earned top honors as the 2019 KLAS Category Leader for Business Decision Support in the 2019 Best in KLAS: Software and Services report for the fifth consecutive year with a score of 93.3 out of 100.

The annual Best in KLAS report ranks healthcare IT software and services vendors across multiple market segments with ratings based on tens of thousands of healthcare provider interviews that KLAS conducted throughout the year. “Category Leaders are committed to providing the very best technology, service, and guidance to providers and payers,” said Adam Gale, President of KLAS. “The Category Leader award carries with it the voice of thousands of providers and payers, highlighting outstanding vendors who have raised the bar.”

According to a recent survey conducted by Strata and Becker’s Healthcare, 90% of healthcare leaders have little to no access to accurate and actionable information on the cost of care, making it extremely difficult to reduce variation, waste and inefficiency. StrataJazz is currently used by over 1,000 hospitals and 200 healthcare delivery systems across the U.S. and has become the “gold standard” for understanding the cost of care via Advanced Cost Accounting.

“We are incredibly proud to be the #1 Business Decision Support solution in KLAS for the fifth consecutive year. It is extremely rare for any company to deliver at a world-class level for their customers this consistently,” stated Dan Michelson, Chief Executive Officer of Strata. “Advanced Cost Accounting has become a mission critical application for hospitals and healthcare delivery systems. Accurate, accessible and actionable information on cost is now seen as a requirement to improve both financial and clinical outcomes, allowing providers to reduce variation and eliminate waste.”

In addition to receiving the #1 ranking for Business Decision Support as KLAS Category Leader for five consecutive years, Strata has also been named to the Becker’s Healthcare’s list of Great Places to Work five consecutive times.

KLAS collects both quantitative and qualitative feedback from healthcare providers. The following are selected commentaries; please visit www.klasresearch.com for a complete view:

“Strata Decision Support has been amazing from the very beginning. The support people are great and have quick turnaround times with any issues. If we can’t get ahold of them, they always call us back even without knowing the details about the issue. Our partnership is valuable to Strata Decision Technology, and they prove that every time we reach out to them.” (Director, June 2018)
“Strata Decision Technology is very oriented toward customer service. They hire extremely smart people. I have been impressed by their knowledge of the product and by their problem solving. Strata Decision Technology strives to be innovative and stay ahead of the curve. They don’t wait around or become stale by basking in their success. They are really focused on innovating and advancing the product in ways that the customers want.” (Director, May 2018)
“We really like StrataJazz Decision Support and have been very satisfied with it. We have been live for several years, and it has revolutionized the way that we have been able to access information quickly. Processes that used to take us several days to complete now take us less than an hour to complete.” (Director, May 2018)
“StrataJazz Decision Support is basically everything that I was looking for. Once it is set up, the maintenance is easy. We don’t have a lot of staff members, so we need something really seamless. Strata Decision Technology maintains the tool, so we don’t have to have servers here and so forth. All of the upgrades are handled by the vendor. The tool doesn’t require a lot of IT or fiscal support once it is implemented.” (VP/Other Executive, May 2018)
“Strata Decision Technology is the epitome of good customer service and is always on top of things.” (Director, June 2018)
“Seeing our users get involved with decision support because of the product is exciting. In the past, the decision support was done by others. However, now we have trained our users to run the analytics themselves and get the reports they need. This has been very effective.” (Manager, Jan 2019)
“Strata Decision Technology provides excellent support. They are very flexible, and the system is user friendly. We can conveniently get to different fields, manipulate the data, and build dashboards to provide snapshots of information to our senior leadership.” (Analyst/Coordinator, June 2018)
“Strata Decision Technology has been exceptionally responsive to our needs.” (Executive)
“I think that Strata Decision Technology is very willing to work with a client to make something happen.” (Manager, Oct 2018)
“The system supports data integration well. Bringing in large amounts of data is much simpler now than it was with our previous budget and previous system. The system runs certain calculations extremely quickly, and we can run cost models much more efficiently now. We can use the system to model our complex contracts, and that helps us make better decisions.” (Analyst/Coordinator, Oct 2018)
“The system has amazing dashboards that we can set up, and we can save the dashboards as PDFs or give people access to look at them.” (Director, Oct 2018)
“StrataJazz Decision Support is really heavy on analytics and a lot of dashboards. It is very easy to use, and someone without a programming background can easily create a report.” (Manager, March 2018)
“The approach Strata Decision Technology has taken during the implementation is phenomenal. They came to our implementation with templates on how to use the product. That was really a nice touch. It wasn’t like they were winging the implementation.” (VP, May 2018)
“StrataJazz Decision Support is way ahead of our old system. When we were shopping around, a lot of the products were really slick, but the people and expertise at Strata Decision Technology really sold me on the product.” (Director, May 2018)
“I am very impressed with Strata Decision Technology’s new releases and their openness to user input. They work with other hospitals, and they partner with Epic because many of their clients use Epic’s systems. They are open to sharing information and creating user groups to gather input and learn from customers.” (Director, March 2018)
“We use StrataJazz Decision Support to meet our needs for accounting, budgeting, contract management, and financial planning. It is the best system we have used for cost accounting, and we love the reporting in the system. (Director, March 2018)
“We have had a very positive experience with Strata Decision Technology. Looking back, I am glad that we made the decision to move forward with them because the product has just been very good for us.” (Director, March 2018)
“With vendors I have used in the past, there has usually been one superstar willing to go the distance to help achieve a successful implementation and go away as soon as the product has gone live. That has not been the case with Strata Decision Technology. There has been an entire team of superstars willing to go the distance beyond the go-live no matter the time of day. Strata Decision Technology is a great partner and really teams up with us. Even high-level executives regularly interact and work with us. The whole team has been involved even before the signing of the deal, so it has been seamless to keep working with the team. We hired Strata Decision Technology for a specific need, and they have built a great product for us and gone above and beyond in helping us with other product needs as well.” (Manager, March 2018)
“The clients have a way to suggest ideas, and people from all of the vendor’s clients can vote on those ideas. The whole system is very open. People determine how helpful or successful ideas are, and then the most favorable ideas are actually added into the system. The vendor goes through this idea process on a very regular basis.” (Director, Feb 2018)
“Strata Decision Technology’s customer service is incredible. The resources take ownership, and we don’t have to follow up on requests; the resources do what they say they will do and meet their deadlines. Other vendors can take months and lots of follow-up to do what we ask them to do. Strata Decision Technology doesn’t have to extend deadlines on their promises. They are very honest. They are always extremely professional and very responsive when I reach out.” (Manager, March 2018)
“Our experience with StrataJazz Decision Support is going very well. The feedback from the user end has been very positive. We are definitely excited about where the product will take us. I really appreciate this new tool because it has taken away some of the workload. We used to do a lot of things manually and enter data into the system because we could not upload files. So having the product has been a huge boost in technology for our team. The product enables us to turn things around much quicker.” (Director, Feb 2018)

About KLAS
KLAS is a data-driven company on a mission to improve the world’s healthcare by enabling provider and payer voices to be heard and counted. Working with thousands of healthcare professionals, KLAS collects insights on software, services and medical equipment to deliver reports, trending data and statistical overviews. KLAS data is accurate, honest and impartial. The research directly reflects the voice of healthcare professionals and acts as a catalyst for improving vendor performance. To learn more about KLAS and the insights we provide, visit www.klasresearch.com.

About Strata Decision Technology
Strata Decision Technology provides an innovative cloud-based financial analytics and performance platform that is used by healthcare providers for financial planning, decision support and continuous improvement. Founded in 1996, the Company’s customer base includes 1,000 hospitals and many of the largest and most influential healthcare delivery systems in the U.S.

The Company’s StrataJazz^® application is a single integrated software as a service platform that includes modules for capital planning, continuous improvement, contract modeling, cost accounting, cost management, decision support, financial forecasting, management reporting, operational budgeting and performance improvement and strategic planning. The Company’s headquarters are in Chicago, IL. For more information, please visit www.stratadecision.com.

CHICAGO, IL, October 25, 2018 —Top U.S. healthcare delivery systems came together this week for Lift18—The Strata Decision Summit, the three-day Strata Decision Technology (Strata) user’s conference focused on helping healthcare organizations leverage financial planning, analytics and performance applications in support of their clinical mission. The Summit included 650 attendees from 115 healthcare delivery systems across the country and comes at a time when hospitals are under severe financial pressure.

While hospitals represent roughly 33% or $1.2 trillion of the total $3.6 trillion spent annually on U.S. healthcare, their average net operating margins have dropped below 3% with close to 30% operating at a loss. At the same time, less than 10% of healthcare providers have access to accurate cost data via an advanced cost accounting solution, making it very difficult for them to identify variation and waste in order to reduce the cost of care.

During the Summit, Strata announced the availability of Time-Driven Costing (TDC™) to help healthcare systems better understand their cost and margins in support of their clinical imperatives. TDC is a feature within StrataJazz^®, the market’s top-rated application for advanced cost accounting and financial decision support. Over 100 U.S. based healthcare delivery systems have or are in the process of deploying StrataJazz for advanced cost accounting, which includes the TDC capability.

“Our customers are working together to implement best practices in order to drive more value for their providers, their organization and the community that they serve. During the Summit we discussed the playbook that top organizations are using to become a Center of Excellence for financial planning, analytics, and performance to address their most significant challenges and most important priorities,” said Dan Michelson, Chief Executive Officer of Strata Decision Technology. “There has never been a time when physicians could do more to help patients or when administrators could do more to help physicians. The resources are there, we just need to make sure we use them wisely. Understanding how to leverage those finite resources as effectively as possible is why capabilities like Time-Driven Costing are so mission critical.”

The TDC capability within StrataJazz allows providers to extract time-based data from existing systems in an automated fashion, allowing for more accurate and detailed costing. The application has included time-driven features in the past but has now expanded the coverage to include TDC for surgery, anesthesia, physician time, clinical time, emergency department, nursing, imaging as well as more traditional time-driven activity-based costing. TDC enables organizations to understand operational costs beyond traditional cost accounting. Issues related to capacity utilization, resource analysis in physician use of support staff time, and the associated impact on clinical outcomes can automatically be tracked.

Strata has earned top honors as the KLAS Category Leader for Business Decision Support for four consecutive years. KLAS is viewed as the Consumer Reports for digital health and their research is based on thousands of healthcare provider surveys and interviews conducted throughout the year.

Additional highlights from the three-day event include the following:

CHRISTUS Health Wins 2018 LEAP Award

CHRISTUS Health, a not-for-profit health system based in Dallas, Texas, was named the winner of the 2018 LEAP Award. CHRISTUS Health is comprised of more than 600 services and facilities, including more than 60 hospitals and long-term care facilities as well as 350 clinics and outpatient centers. A Strata customer for 20 years, CHRISTUS was recognized for their work in analytics to gain a comprehensive view of the true cost and margins across episodes of care, service lines and patient populations and for their collaboration with their clinical and administrative staff in using this data to improve clinical and financial outcomes. The LEAP Award recognizes healthcare organizations for outstanding performance in the areas of finance and strategy to benefit both their organization and the community that they serve.

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Receives the 2018 Development Partner Award

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) is the nation’s first hospital devoted exclusively to the care of children. As transparent pricing continues to be a priority for states and for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, the ongoing collaboration between CHOP and Strata will help providers understand their cost, as well as develop and communicate their pricing to patient families in a more succinct and effective way.

Keynote Highlights Bringing Moneyball to Medicine

The Keynote for the conference was Paul DePodesta the subject of best-selling book Moneyball. His story of helping turn the Oakland A’s, the worst team in baseball with lowest payroll, into baseball’s best team revealed the stunning and hidden power of data and analytics to make a difference. Healthcare providers have learned that data by itself doesn’t add much value. Other industries including professional sports are decades ahead of healthcare in applied analytics, using data in a practical way to solve problems and overhaul stagnant systems.

Strata provides the healthcare industry’s leading cloud-based, modular platform for planning, analytics and performance. With a client base of over 1,000 hospitals, Strata provides attendees the opportunity to meet with peers and discuss best practices across a spectrum of topics related to driving change in healthcare. Notable organizations presenting included Advocate Aurora Health, Akron Children’s Hospital, Anderson Regional Medical Center, Augusta Health, Baptist Health, Children’s Health in Dallas, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, CHRISTUS Health, John Muir Health, Maine Health, Mercy Health, OSF Healthcare and The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center amongst others.

About Strata Decision Technology

The Company’s StrataJazz^® application is a single integrated software platform that includes modules for strategic planning, capital planning, operational budgeting, management and productivity reporting, decision support and continuous improvement. The Company’s headquarters are in Chicago, IL. For more information, please visit www.stratadecision.com.

Contact: Rachael Britnell, [email protected], 312.827.7711

As healthcare organizations seek to tap into data for actionable insights, they are looking outside of healthcare for best practices. One of the world’s most well-respected minds on the use of data analytics to drive change is someone you may know, but likely have never heard of — Paul DePodesta.

Mr. DePodesta was famously profiled in the book and hit movie Moneyball. This true story of turning the worst team in baseball — with lowest payroll — into baseball’s best team revealed the stunning and hidden power of how data and analytics can make a difference.

In the movie, the unsung hero is an analyst played by actor Jonah Hill — a character based on Mr. DePodesta’s time with the Oakland Athletics. In the early 2000s, Mr. DePodesta was assistant to the general manager for the Oakland A’s, where he helped to pioneer the use of analytics to build a better baseball team. But Mr. DePodesta’s affinity for data started much earlier, when he began working as an advance scout with the Cleveland Indians in the 1990s.

“The advance scout is the one who goes out and watches all of opponents before you play them,” Mr. DePodesta told Becker’s Hospital Review. “At end of the first game I walked back to my office quarters and thought I was wholly unprepared to do this job … I thought, ‘Who is going to listen to a 23-year-old who hasn’t played professional baseball, and doesn’t have the benefit of all this experience and insight?’ I was rattled.”

As Mr. DePodesta continued scouting for the Cleveland Indians, he realized he didn’t have to provide the players with insights — he could gather data from the opponents’ games, and report back to his team. “Rather than being a columnist, I was going to be court stenographer and just record the action and report on the action,” he said.

“For instance, rather than saying you should throw sliders to this hitter with two strikes, I could say this hitter is one for 24 on sliders with two strikes, and then allow you to do with that information whatever you like,” Mr. DePodesta continued. “I started digging deeper and deeper into the data, and I realized there was a treasure trove of information. It really astounded me.”

Today, he is bringing the Moneyball concepts to football in his role as the chief strategy officer for the Cleveland Browns — a team that recently made headlines for winning their first game in almost two years.

Mr. DePodesta, who is slated to keynote the Strata Decision Summit Oct. 24 in Chicago, is now nationally known and sought after expert on applying data to drive changes. At the Strata Decision Summit, he will discuss how he’s used analytics throughout his career with the MLB, and how that journey led him to bring his experience to the NFL.

“For me, Paul’s work is a great example of how the thoughtful, collaborative use of data can fundamentally change the game,” Dan Michelson, CEO of Strata Decision Technology, told Becker’s Hospital Review.

“At this point, no one would question that folks in the front office as well as managers and players are more effective when they have data in their hands,” he added. “They now draft players, as well as coach and play the game, completely differently. Given what’s at stake in healthcare, both clinically and financially, we all have a responsibility to bring the concepts of Moneyball to medicine.”

Becker’s Hospital Review caught up with Mr. DePodesta to discuss his time with the Oakland A’s, how he addresses industry leaders who are skeptical of shaking up traditional processes, and his tips for applying data insights in any industry.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Question: What were some struggles you encountered in the early days, when you were first taking steps into analytics?

Paul DePodesta: It really is a sea change in how you think about decision-making. You get a lot of pushback from different areas — people who have been doing it a certain way for a long time, or an industry doing it a certain way for a long time. You get push back from people who are hugely successful in their field, who have a framework for how they’ve done things. Then, there is also human psychology. There are all sorts of biases built into human decision-making — some of them are valuable, which is why they are so deeply ingrained, but the reality is a lot of this work in analytics ends up both exposing and coming into conflict with those mental shortcuts that we almost all employ daily. Those are obstacles we faced then, still face today and will continue to face going forward.

Q: Can you give an example of a time when analytics contradicted a cognitive bias?

PD: Recency bias really plays prominently in sports. We expect whatever happened recently is more likely to affect what happens going forward, or more likely to be status quo going forward. When you are playing 162 baseball games, what someone has done in the last three to five days features prominently in your mind, even if that person may have a 10-year career behind them that — taken as a collective — is much more predictive of future performance. Has this guy “lost it” because he’s two for 20 over the last five days, even though he’s been good enough to maintain a 10-year career in the major leagues? We’re human, so it happens to all of us.

Q: What is your response to people who say, “But this is the way we’ve always done things”?

PD: When Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense to advocate for democracy in the late 1700s, it was not widely accepted — it was a pretty controversial piece of literature at the time. In second edition he wrote a forward, where he said that a long habit of not thinking that something is wrong gives it the superficial appearance of being right. That continues to be true today. When I’m confronted with someone saying that, I try to preempt those conversations by proactively putting that out there. But what I don’t want to do is indict what they’ve been doing for a long time. There is probably a reason they have been doing it, and that reason might have been a really, really good reason once upon a time. As times and circumstances change, it’s important to change our processes along with it.

Q: To keep coaches with you as you introduce new ways of thinking and strategizing, you need to not completely indict what they’ve done in the past. Can you talk more about that?

PD: Absolutely. Going further, you really need to gain insight into why those things were done in the past and what made them successful, rather than dismissing them as being outdated now. There could be some valuable insights in there that help whatever new model or process you’re trying to create. These people’s experiences and expertise are invaluable as you continue to try to build something that is new and better. We had a lot of conversations with our experienced baseball personnel — people who had deep knowledge of a particular piece of the puzzle, say our pitching coach, which ended up back in our algorithms or models. It’s a process we’ve gone through in the NFL, trying to pull as much knowledge as we can from all these people who have a tremendous amount of expertise.

Q: Across other industries, how would you recommend people reexamine tasks or functions that could be better leveraged with data-driven insights and decision-making?

PD: Anything that involves a good dose of uncertainty can benefit from analytics or some type of data and analysis. For us in sports, it is the fundamental principle that we are trying to predict the future performances of human beings. It’s true for a lot of different industries too; everyone is dealing with uncertainty and trying to get their arms around what the future is going to look like or what they ought to do in a particular situation. In all those circumstances, if you have the right data and insights, it can help you consistently make better decisions. Not that it will help you be perfect by any stretch, hopefully just consistently better.

Q: Right now, in healthcare, data isn’t shared. Looking across an organization with a couple thousand physicians, what are the first steps you would take to make data actionable?

PD: There are two things I’d initially focus on, and they are awfully broad. The first is, what is it you would like to know that you don’t currently know? What piece of information would be valuable to you in making a decision you have to make that you don’t currently have? We asked ourselves that in Oakland and we continue to ask this all the time. The second question is, what is it you are sure you know? Whatever those things are, make sure you go back and study them to verify whether they are actually true.

There was an exercise we went through in Oakland, where there were all these clichés in our industry that we had grown up to believe as true, and at one point we decided to study everything. In my experience, 80 percent to 90 percent of things believed to be true are in fact true and continue to be true. But there is this small percentage where maybe it isn’t true anymore, and if you come up with a new process or better insight in that small percentage, that can lead to significant advantages. It gives you a tremendous advantage over your competition, because the rest of the industry continues to believe something is true, when in reality it is not, or it’s not true anymore