Evaluating team-based care and education initiatives based on data—not on opinion—is core to National Center’s mission and success. To that end, a data repository is being created to house both quantitative and qualitative information about team-based educational programs and care programs. The National Center Data Repository, the first of its kind in the nation, will enable National Center to demonstrate that, practicing together, learning together and collecting data together will have a positive impact on the Triple Aim of improving the patient experience, improving population health and reducing per capita cost of health care.

Members of the National Center Nexus Innovations Incubator Network, which are partnerships of universities and health systems, are charged with testing team education and care models and concepts in real-world health care settings. They will populate the database with a core data set, common for all sites, and also include data from their specific National Center projects. What they learn is key to developing effective approaches to education and care. Currently there are eight members, and that network is growing.

According to Frank Cerra, M.D., senior advisor for National Center, “The idea behind the repository and the network is to gather data and produce the evidence and information for various stakeholders, so they will participate in this redesign of health care and education.”

Connie Delaney, Ph.D., dean and professor, University of Minnesota School of Nursing, is an expert in informatics and key leader in the development of the Data Repository. “For us to truly progress as an integrated health care learning system for our patients, families and communities, academia and clinical care must partner interprofessionally. We need to be able to describe what that partnership is and whether it makes any difference in the care and the health of the people described by the Triple Aim, and in the education of our next generations of health care providers.”

National Center Data Repository leaders have developed three surveys to identify elements of both the core data set and one customized survey to collect project–specific information. “Early adopting Nexus Innovations Incubator Network members are already entering data,” explains data repository lead and School of Nursing clinical assistant professor Judy Pechacek, D.N.P., R.N. “We’re now incorporating feedback from these sites to make sure the data collection process is simple yet valuable.”