The Challenge
For all its clinical sophistication and geographic reach, SIU Medicine faced many of the same operational hurdles as other health systems navigating value-based care: siloed data sources, inconsistent reporting standards, and growing administrative strain on frontline teams. Managing over 15 active VBC contracts, each with its own set of measures and incentives, required precision, agility and coordination across a large provider network.
"We were managing quality across 15 spreadsheets, that's not sustainable when you're responsible for 200 providers and 15 different contracts."
Lindsey Freeman, MBA, Deputy Director of Quality and Practice Transformation at SIU Family Medicine and Community Medicine
However, performance monitoring remained fragmented. Quality data lived in multiple systems and spreadsheets, attribution lists changed frequently, and care gap closure was often reactive rather than proactive.
In 2023 alone, SIU Medicine estimated it missed out on over $1.1 million in performance-based incentives, capturing just 28% of the potential value across key payer programs. The remaining 72%—more than$1.1 million—was left on the table due to fragmented reporting, attribution confusion, and delayed visibility into contract performance.
Further, these inefficiencies led to missed opportunities to engage patients, close gaps in care, and meet payer benchmarks. Clinicians often received data too late to make meaningful changes, and administrators were burdened with manual reconciliation across payer-specific requirements.
“We couldn’t act fast enough on what the data was telling us because we didn’t have it in a usable form,” Freeman said.
The Solution
To stay ahead of performance targets and risk-based reimbursement models, SIU Medicine partnered with Azara Healthcare to implement its Best in KLAS population health management platform, Azara DRVS.DRVS enables a single source of truth for quality data, allowing SIU a more agile and integrated way to manage data, unify contract monitoring, and engage teams in real-time performance efforts.
With Azara DRVS, SIU Medicine supports:
- Continuous performance monitoring across 15+ VBC contracts
- Real-time attribution tracking and patient panel management
- Centralized dashboards tailored to providers, quality leaders, and executives
- Proactive care gap closure workflows integrated into clinical operations
- Standardized reporting that reduces rework and improves accountability
- Automated supplemental data submission directly to health plans
"We needed to streamline our processes and have one source of truth, DRVS gave us a clear picture of our data and allowed us to course-correct in real time."
Michal Dynda, MD, Chief Medical Officer and Chief Medical Information Officer at SIU Medicine
The Results
With DRVS in place, SIU Medicine has made meaningful progress in operationalizing its value-based care strategy. What once required reconciling fragmented spreadsheets and payer-specific reports is now driven by a single, consistent analytics platform. By giving providers and administrators easy to use reports and facilitating automated supplemental data submission with health plans, all staff members now have the visibility they need to act.
The impact of ingesting supplemental data alone is already measurable. For its Centene Medicaid contract, SIU Medicine achieved a 27.3% improvement in overall measure performance, increasing earnings from $2,800 in 2023 to $70,560 in early 2024.
Within Six Months of PVP Implementation:
- Diabetes HbA1c <8: Improved from 7.6% to 52.63% or by 45.03%
- Controlling High Blood Pressure: improved from 47.64% to 68.39% or by +20.75%
- Adults' Access to Care: increased by 6.01%
- Breast Cancer Screening: improved by 4.92%
- Cervical Cancer Screening: improved by 3.09%
But the transformation goes beyond financial impact.
By implementing Azara DRVS and building a foundation of trust in their data, SIU Medicine has been able to standardize reporting, engage clinical teams, and accelerate their value-based care efforts.
Benefits include:
- Greater confidence in data accuracy and measure definitions
- Streamlined workflows for closing care gaps and monitoring contract performance
- Improved efficiency in generating payer reports and internal dashboards
- Expanded ability to drill down by location, provider and patient population
- Increased engagement from providers and careteams through accessible, actionable insights
- Improved operational efficiencies, patient outcomes, and contract performance through automated supplemental data submission to payers
"DRVS has given us the ability to standardize the way we measure success, not just across our programs but across our entire organization, it's helped us get everyone on the same page and focus on what matters most: patient care."
Lindsey Freeman, MBA, Deputy Director of Quality and Practice Transformation at SIU Family Medicine and Community Medicine
What's Next
As SIU Medicine continues to deepen its value-based care footprint, the organization is focused on expanding its use of DRVS to drive more advanced population health strategies. Plans include integrating more social needs insights into clinical workflows, refining risk stratification models, and further aligning incentives across clinical departments. By investing in a data-driven foundation, SIU Medicine is not only improving operational efficiency and provider engagement, it’s creating a more responsive and equitable health system for the communities it serves.
