Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Sfhn Metrics topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
San Francisco Health Network reports early wins on metrics, flags data and IT challenges
Summary
SFHN leaders told the Health Commission they met or exceeded targets on five of ten "Way Forward" metrics at six months and highlighted improvements in mammography and sepsis care, while warning that fragmented IT systems and noncomparable patient-survey tools limit cross-division comparisons.
Roland Pickens, director of the San Francisco Health Network, and Dr. Alice Chen, the network's chief medical officer, presented a six-month update to the Health Commission on April 22 on managed-care enrollment, branding and the network's 10 "Way Forward" metrics.
Pickens said the network touches roughly 120,000 unduplicated patients and described recent partnerships and a contract with Northeast Medical Services to provide hospital and specialty care for that organization's Medi-Cal managed-care product.
Dr. Chen reviewed the way-forward dashboard and said the network met or exceeded targets for five of the 10 metrics, including finance (revenue/expense ratio), selected access measures and a clinical measure for mammography. She cited specific quality-improvement efforts at San Francisco General Hospital (sepsis care standardization, surgical-site infection reductions) and primary-care interventions (medical-assistant workflows, evening/weekend mammogram slots and targeted outreach) driving gains.
"Clinical measures are really important. We are a clinical enterprise. If we don't have clinical measures, we don't know how we're doing," Dr. Chen said. She also underscored measurement challenges: fragmented databases, differing survey tools (HCAHPS, CG-CAHPS, local surveys) and small sample sizes for some programs, making network-wide comparisons difficult.
Commissioners urged the department to develop a policy-level scorecard tied to the Triple Aim (cost, population health and patient experience) and asked for committee-level refinement of which metrics the commission should monitor. Director Garcia and commissioners agreed to a six-month pilot period to refine dashboards and move detailed reviews to committee levels.
Why it matters: the six-month report shows early, measurable improvements in selected clinical areas while highlighting structural limitations (IT fragmentation and survey methodology) that could slow further progress or obscure disparities across clinics. Commissioners directed staff to work toward a clearer, committee-level scorecard that aligns with policy oversight duties.
What to watch for: the commission expects committee-level proposals within six months on a refined scorecard, continued quality-improvement results (mammography, sepsis, care coordination) and plans for an enterprise electronic health record and data governance to support cross-network analytics.
