The Analyst's Perspective
WCHQ bolsters analytic capabilities with addition to staff

Matt Gigot Project Analyst

Since its inception in 2003, WCHQ has been at the forefront in the development of performance measures, collection of data related to these measures and public reporting of results. Now, in its continuing effort to enhance the information it provides to its members and the public, WCHQ has taken the significant step of bringing data analysis capabilities to its staff.

Meet Matt Gigot, WCHQ’s new project analyst. Matt, who began with WCHQ in February 2010, comes to us from the University of Wisconsin’s Population Health Institute where he worked while completing his Master of Public Health degree at UW. His position with WCHQ is generously funded through a grant in conjunction with the Health Equity in Wisconsin (NHEW) initiative.

“WCHQ has always been a national leader in the collection and reporting of quality measures. In my role, I hope to lend my population health background and perspective to analyze the rich data our organization collects. I am excited about the opportunity to use analytical tools at our disposal to better understand the data we collect and communicate that understanding to our members. In addition, I believe I can assist members with targeting quality improvement initiatives to specific subsets of their patient populations,” said Gigot.

Initially, Matt will bring his analytical capabilities to spearhead three projects for WCHQ, including:

• Examining WCHQ quality measures to determine if there has been statistically significant improvement over time. All measures that have been collected for at least two years will be reviewed including measures such as diabetes control measures (A1c, LDL, etc.) and cancer screening measures (breast, colorectal and cervical screenings, etc.), among others.
• Creating a standardized methodology to rank WCHQ members’ performance across all measures to identify those organizations with high performing systems and cultures of improvement with the goal of sharing “best practices” with other members.
• Serving as WCHQ’s primary representative for the Network for Health Equity in Wisconsin (NHEW) initiative. The NHEW project is working to combine WCHQ’s performance measures and data tools with data collected from the Survey of the Health of Wisconsin (SHOW) and county health ranking compiled by the UW Population Health Institute. The goal is to combine these separate data sources to identify the determinants of the state’s significant health disparities and inequities according to place of residence, race/ethnicity, gender and socioeconomic status. In addition, this collaboration will help to inform WCHQ member organizations about the health behaviors and beliefs of their patient populations, as well as provide a more complete picture of the environments they live in.
  

“I look forward to reporting the ongoing results of these three projects in subsequent editions of this newsletter and through various WCHQ meetings,” added Gigot. Look for his periodic column, “The Analyst’s Perspective” in future editions of this newsletter.

In all three of these initial projects and in future analytical work, the Repository Based Submission (RBS) data reporting tool will play a key role, according to Gigot. “The data submitted through RBS is a much more robust data set than the traditional data submission methodology. With a more robust data set we can increase the level of sophistication of the analysis we perform on the WCHQ population. I encourage all our members to consider using the RBS tool for data submission. With it, we will be able to provide our members with a more thorough and complete analysis of the WCHQ population.” To learn more about the RBS data reporting tool, please see the News & Views article in the Winter 2009 edition or contact Mary Gordon (608-775-4519/mgordon@wchq.org) or Matt (see below).

For more information about these projects or if you have suggestions for other areas of inquiry, please contact Matt at 608-826-6719 or at mgigot@wchq.org

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