With an eye toward curbing healthcare costs while improving quality, many organizations are investing in Centers of Excellence (CoEs). Healthcare Centers of Excellence are recognized for their commitment to quality, expertise, and the pursuit of the best possible outcomes for patients. They often play a critical role in advancing medical knowledge and improving patient care in specialized areas of healthcare. Common examples of CoEs include centers for cancer treatment, heart and vascular care, orthopedic surgery, transplant services, and more.
CoEs can be established by a variety of entities, including healthcare organizations, medical institutions, government agencies, and sometimes private entities. According to a 2023 Business Group on Health report, one of the top healthcare benefit investment areas for employers is around centers of excellence.
One innovative health plan benefits administrator is taking their centers of excellence program to the next level, helping employers gain more control over the quality and cost of care for their employees through more effective provider network design and management.
Behind the benefits administrator’s comprehensive CoE experience for each patient is extensive research to identify and understand the clinical quality of providers in their network.
The traditional process for identifying and analyzing physicians and facilities for CoE recruitment is both time and labor-intensive, with limited access to performance data and thousands of hours spent collating siloed datasets for each analysis.
In order to scale their CoE programs, the benefits administrator needed a faster, more precise way to evaluate providers. They decided to partner with Clarify to replace their time consuming, manual analyses with Clarify’s on-demand provider performance insights.
The CoE team now uses Clarify’s precise, case-mix adjusted provider performance benchmarks in each market and disease area to accelerate CoE decisions. On a recent project, they not only saved months of work and hundreds of thousands of dollars in resources, but they’ve also been able to expand access to new types of care and specialties for their partners’ members.
Building on the success of this project, the benefits administrator’s team is now working with Clarify Health to understand and optimize their competitive position in target markets. Using price transparency insights combined with competitive network insights, the team can see how they compare against national and regional “wrap-around” networks.
Feeling inspired? Learn more about this healthcare changemaker’s story in this case study.
