New dashboard helps UK St. Claire provide better care for patients
About 1.5 million Kentuckians – nearly one in three people in the state – receive health coverage through Medicaid. Programs like the Medicaid Directed Payment Program are designed to strengthen care for these patients by helping hospitals and clinics invest in services that improve health outcomes.
As part of the payment program, healthcare providers like clinics and hospitals can receive additional payments from the state and federal governments to expand Medicaid services.
UK St. Claire Regional Medical Center recently joined the program but needed a way to track measures required to receive additional funds.
To track these measures, the 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 meets required criteria, but also which healthcare outcomes need more attention.
Building the dashboard
Michelle Simpkins, director of population health analytics and IT safety, said because UK St. Claire is new to the program, the hospital needed a system to keep track of more than 20 required healthcare outcomes.
Healthcare outcomes show how healthcare services are working.
UK ITS teams discussed how to track measures and which options were available for UK St. Claire. Working together, the 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
The dashboard provides a centralized location where UK St. Claire’s team can see health outcomes as well as social determinants of health — non-medical factors that impact health such as food insecurity and housing.
“Visibility into this dashboard can help drive healthcare 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.”
Dashboard data has allowed UK St. Claire to implement different programs in their primary care and imaging areas to encourage patients to get necessary medical screenings and care.
Addressing overall health
In 2025, Kentucky’s average life expectancy was 73.6 years, almost three years less than the U.S. average of 76.3, according to data from the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute'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 healthcare.
“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.