How a newly designed dashboard helps St. Claire provide better care for patients

Approximately 1.5 million Kentuckians, about a third of the commonwealth’s population, are insured through Medicaid.

Health care providers like clinics and hospitals can receive additional payments from the state and federal governments to expand Medicaid services as part of the Medicaid Directed Payment Program.

UK St. Claire Regional Medical Center recently joined the Medicaid Directed Payment Program but needed a way to track measures required to receive additional funds from the program.

To track those required measures, University of Kentucky Information Technology Services (UK ITS) teams built a data dashboard with UK St. Claire. The new dashboard not only allows the hospital to see how it is meeting all the required criteria, but it also shows which health care outcomes need more attention.

Building the dashboard

Director of Population Health Analytics and IT Safety Michelle Simpkins said because St. Claire is new to the program, the hospital needed a system to keep track of more than 20 required health care outcomes.

Health care outcomes are the results of how health care services are working.

One of the most important steps taken by ITS teams was spending time in a room together to discuss the dashboard’s design before building it.

UK ITS teams discussed how to track measures and which of those options were available for St. Claire By taking to time to include all teams in the initial conversations, that ensured that measures were accurately captured.

As a result, St. Claire and UK ITS teams created a multifaceted dashboard.

UK St. Claire Chief Medical Information Officer Aaron Parker Banks, DO, led the rebuild of Meditech’s Quality Vantage reporting.

“Over the last couple of years, we’ve worked collaboratively with technical and IT teams across St. Claire and UK to develop a standardized dashboard between Epic and Meditech— which was critical to ensuring we could consistently understand and compare meaningful primary care measures and clearly see how we were performing as an institution,” Banks said. “That collaboration also ensured that the data behind the dashboard is trustworthy, aligned and actionable, allowing leadership to monitor performance against Medicaid Directed Payment measures over time rather than relying on static reports.”

Tracking health outcome measures

St. Claire’s dashboard allows them to see health outcomes, as well as social determinates of health — non-medical factors that impact health such as food insecurity and housing — in a centralized location.

“Visibility into this dashboard can help drive health care and encourage providers to work towards those quality measures,” Simpkins said. “One example of that includes knowing a population’s rates of mammogram screening and allowing that to help you improve the numbers or bring that service to different groups of people who may not have participated in the past.”

Data from the dashboard has allowed St. Claire to implement different programs in their primary care and in their imaging areas that allow them to encourage patients to get necessary medical screenings and care.

Addressing overall health

In 2025, Kentucky’s average life expectancy was 73.6 years, three years less the U.S. average of 76.3, according to data from the University of Wisconsin's County Health Rankings.

Using dashboard data can help provide better care for patients in counties where the average life expectancy is even lower.

Because social determinants of health are part of health outcomes, knowing what patients need to stay healthy overall, can help drive better overall health care.

“Patients' health can be impacted by things like food insecurity,” Simpkins said. “So, knowing that and knowing things that your patients need in order to manage their care, that drives quality care.”

For example, the dashboard tracks measures like well child screenings, mammogram and colorectal screenings and screenings for depression. Simpkins said that data allows providers the opportunity to address gaps in care.

“It was a joy being involved with this project and to know that the technical work we do directly impacts patient care is truly rewarding,” Simpkins said.