University of California Health saving $15 million through pooled surgery data


Photo: Al David Sacks/Getty Images
The five medical centers overseen by the University of California have collected more than a decade’s worth of surgical data, allowing it to streamline care and improve financial margins, saving $15 million so far in a collective known as the University of California Cardiac Surgery Consortium (UCCSC), the university said.
The quality improvements, which U of California described as both standardized and sustainable, are the result of performing advanced analytics on 200 data elements from each patient, which the university said has provided valuable insights.
In addition to the $15 million savings, the pooled data resulted in 132 bed days saved, while the most commonly performed procedure, isolated coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), showed improved early extubation, reduced blood utilization and reduced readmissions between 2015 and 2023.
The consortium’s health centers perform about 4,000 cardiac surgery operations annually.
WHAT’S THE IMPACT
Dr. Richard J. Shemin, chief of the division of cardiac surgery and a distinguished professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, founded UCCSC in 2012, bringing together University of California health centers in San Diego, Irvine, Los Angeles, Davis and San Francisco. The cardiac surgery chiefs and database nurse coordinators confer biweekly and formally meet annually.
In addition to increasing the volume of procedures and reducing their variability, the consortium aims to optimize costs and explore contracting opportunities, such as joint purchasing.
Each health center uploads its clinical data every quarter. Biome Analytics, a cardiovascular technology firm, then performs multivariable regression analyses on single site and system-wide outcomes.
Between 2015 and 2023, the health center’s 4,880 CABG procedures showed several improvements. Blood product utilization decreased by 8.26%; the rate of early extubation (less than six hours) increased by 22%; average initial ventilator hours decreased by 1.5 hours; median length of stay in the ICU decreased by 0.38 days; 30-day readmissions decreased by 3.96%; and new onset atrial fibrillation, at 25.4%, was below the Society of Thoracic Surgeons’ benchmark.
The consortium also analyzed the cost savings, finding for example that early extubation resulted in a margin improvement of about $6.7 million and decreased ventilation in about $3.6 million. The 132 bed days saved equaled a cost savings of about $486,000.
THE LARGER TREND
In September UCLA received a $120 million commitment from surgeon, inventor and philanthropist Dr. Gary Michelson and his wife, Alya, to kick-start the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy, a public-private partnership aimed at spurring breakthrough discoveries that prevent and cure diseases.
Michelson, a spine surgeon and inventor who holds nearly 1,000 individual patents, is cofounder and chair of the board of the institute, which will be housed at UCLA’s research park.
The gift, distributed via the Michelson Medical Research Foundation, designates $100 million to establish two research entities within the institute, each funded by $50 million. One will focus on rapid vaccine development, and the other on harnessing the microbiome to advance human health.
Jeff Lagasse is editor of Healthcare Finance News.
Email: jlagasse@himss.org
Healthcare Finance News is a HIMSS Media publication.