Using a web analytic tool to evaluate Pathways program engagement in 36 Michigan oncology practices.

Abstract

198 Background: Evidence-based, cancer treatment pathways reduce unnecessary variation in care, reduce waste, and improve value. Financial incentives and sharing adherence rates may motivate oncologists to change treatment patterns. The Michigan Pathways Program (Pathways) is a statewide quality improvement program sponsored by BlueCross BlueShield of Michigan and supported on the Caret web-based registry. Pathways measures and incentivizes adherence to local treatment pathways (JOP 8e32s, 2012; ASCO 2015 Ann Mtg, abst 6584). Caret reports allow participants to review adherence rates. Using Google Analytics (GA), we measured access by participants of adherence reports and attempted to correlate this measure of engagement with adherence. Methods: Caret provides decision support for regimen selection within the Pathways. BCBSM medical claims are uploaded to ensure completeness of data. Caret generates reports allowing participants to review site-specific adherence data and compare with de-identified aggregate data from all participants. GA gathers data about page tags being accessed at a location by users, which were assumed to correlate to Pathways practices. Unique page views for web-based adherence reports were assessed for each location and compared to adherence rates. Results: 36 practices were included from 34 unique locations. 34.4% of practices are accessing adherence reports. For users the mean treatment adherence was 82.7% compared to 79.3% for non-users. Conclusions: Web analytics offers a novel method for gauging practice engagement in our program. This initial assessment will help to target education sessions based on location in addition to identifying potential best practices. At this time conclusions cannot be made to correlate application engagement to adherence rates. We predict an increased need for web analytics to measure the use of resources utilized by practices. [Table: see text]