Oklahoma Cancer Specialists and Research Institute unlocks powerful insights to improve patient care and productivity

MOSAIQ Oncology Analytics streamlines data reporting and visualization, helps team prepare for RO-APM

Access to data analytics has the power to improve patient care, productivity and reduce costs. But for many radiation oncology centers, gathering the data and turning it into actionable practice information is a time-consuming, manual process.

“We used to spend hours and hours manually preparing monthly reports on physician metrics as well as weekly reports for volumes,” says Liz Hyde, MBA, RTT, Director of Radiation Oncology, Radiology and Research for Oklahoma Cancer Specialists and Research Institute (OCSRI). Tracking treatment metrics involved people from across the clinic inputting data into spreadsheets to track where each patient was in the process of care.

“It was a significant amount of team hours behind the data, and if one error occurred, it affected several things down the line,” says Sara Cook, BSRT(T), Manager of Radiation Services for OCSRI.

The OCSRI team wanted to find a way to automate their manual reporting processes. They sought better visibility into their data, including treatment metrics, staff productivity and machine downtime. And because OCSRI had been chosen to participate in the CMS Radiation Oncology Alternative Payment Model (RO-APM), a clear picture of their data would be essential for success under the value-based payment program.

After investigating several options, the team ultimately decided on MOSAIQ^® Oncology Analytics (MOA) to help the center run at peak efficiency.

“We also chose MOA because of the ability to customize and create our own reports. It’s a little bit of time on the front end to set it up, but it saves us an enormous amount of time on the back end.”

The team appreciates that they don’t have to drastically change their existing workflows with MOA. “We also chose MOA because of the ability to customize and create our own reports,” says Cook. “It’s a little bit of time on the front end to set it up, but it saves us an enormous amount of time on the back end.”

After Elekta conducted onsite training on MOA, the OCSRI team was up and running. “We were using it clinically right away,” says Hyde. “We modified some of the reports to suit our needs and made some from scratch, but MOA does come with useful reports right out of the box.”

Robust reporting provides a complete picture of practice performance

With MOA, the OCSRI team develops a number of reports and dashboards using data from the MOSAIQ electronic health record (EHR). These reports make it easy for the team to understand their data and identify new ways to enhance patient care, optimize operations and improve cost savings.

Some of the reports OCSRI builds with MOA include:

SABR treatment report

The report tracks Stereotactic Ablative Radiotherapy (SABR) treatments, looking at the daily treatments per day of the week and by physician. Since building the original report, the team has expanded it to include volumes by month and by clinicians.

“We use this to compare our volumes on a month-to-month basis and to the previous year,” notes Cook. “And we’ve seen a significant increase in our SABR volumes recently. We also track days of the week to see if there are specific days that have higher volumes than others and how we can use the information to inform staffing decisions.”

Weekly physics QA volumes

Another report monitors the QAs volumes by type and physicist for the previous week. The report includes end-of-treatment checks, initial chart checks, weekly chart checks, Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) QA and other miscellaneous Physics QCL’s (Quality Checklist).

“It’s important to monitor the distribution of work to ensure it is equitable among the physicists,” says Justin Silkwood, MS, Senior Medical Physicist for OCSRI, adding that the reports are automatically emailed to the senior physicist each week for analysis. “If QCL volumes were to sharply increase in the future, reports like this will help visualize the need for additions or modifications to staffing.”

Weekly dosimetry volumes

Similar to the physics QCL volumes report, the dosimetry report breaks down QCL type, dosimetrist and location. “This report is powerful because our dosimetry team briefly transitioned to a work-from-home hybrid solution where they only came into the clinic about once a month for a week-long rotation,” says Silkwood. “MOA helps keep their contributions to the clinic visible for management, even when they’re away.”

Daily treatment stats and machine downtime

OCSRI also uses MOA to create a report visualizing daily treatment stats, including incomplete treatments, by clinic location. The bar chart visualization highlights the reason the patient missed treatment, such as a treatment break, appointment cancellation, machine downtime or no show.

“This report is near and dear to my heart because gathering this information used to be a very labor-intensive process,” says Hyde. “The report gives us so much information about why patients missed treatments. The daily treatment stats also provide useful information to help clinics track and manage their staffing.”

Uncovering new opportunities with MOA

The OCSRI team continues to improve on existing reports and find new uses for MOA in the department. Reports that are currently in development at OCSRI include:

• Missed, duplicate and non-exported charges, daily and end of month
• Hypofractionation metrics by disease site, physician and location.
• Staffing, supply, service/software agreement costs per diagnosis, type of treatment and location

“In addition to the time-savings, there’s just so much actionable information that you can get out of MOA.”

“We have a weekly meeting to talk about ideas for getting even more insights out of MOA,” adds Hyde. “Elekta assists us with our report ideas and writing our reports when we need that help. In addition to the time-savings, there’s just so much actionable information that you can get out of MOA.”

To find out more about how MOSAIQ Oncology Analytics can transform EHR data into actionable business intelligence, click here.