Mastering the Uniform Data System: Transforming an obligation into an opportunity

For federally qualified health centers (FQHCs), the Uniform Data System (UDS) can be a painful burden — a backward-facing, compliance-driven reporting task that ties up critical assets every year between New Year’s and Valentine’s Day, costing personnel hours and operational efficiency.

But for health centers interested in a data-driven future, the UDS can present a unique opportunity to modernize and even gain insight — while adding value from a process that is normally seen as a chore. A smart approach to UDS reporting can provide FQHCs with a strategic advantage that leads to better federal compliance, improved behind-the-scenes efficiency and improved patient outcomes.

How is the Uniform Data System used?

UDS is an annual reporting system through which FQHCs report their clinical and financial data to federal and state regulators, enabling authorities to monitor healthcare trends, allocate resources effectively and drive data-driven decision-making about community needs.

UDS data is also used to evaluate the performance of health centers, improve standards of care and identify centers of excellence. By providing insights into disease patterns, treatment costs and patient demographics, UDS serves as a vital tool for managing and tracking critical data from FQHCs nationwide.

Traditionally, UDS data has been primarily used for monitoring purposes, with limited direct consequences for inaccuracies or deviations from the norm. However, the landscape is shifting, and there are now more reasons than ever for FQHCs to insist on accurate data, both from an accountability perspective and for the potential insights they can glean from their data.

During the COVID-19 crisis, certain grant awards were directly tied to the total number of patients served, as reported through UDS. This allocation method may continue into the future, underscoring the importance of accurate and comprehensive data reporting for FQHCs seeking to secure vital funding and resources.

Surviving the slog

For most FQHCs, keeping up with UDS compliance is a pain. With a strict reporting deadline of February 15, many health centers struggle at the beginning of the year to allocate resources toward collecting the necessary data and organizing reporting. If entities haven’t been checking data quality and outcomes yearlong, it can make for a fire drill just in time for Valentine’s Day.

To effectively address the challenges associated with UDS reporting, it is crucial to first identify the specific pain points within an FQHC’s data collection and management operations. Common hurdles include:

• Lack of dedicated resources: Many FQHCs don’t have the resources to dedicate personnel to the UDS reporting process. Often, data entry and reporting responsibilities are assigned to staff members whose training is in other areas, leading to potential oversights or inaccuracies.
• Data silos and fragmentation: In some cases, data may be scattered across multiple systems or departments within an FQHC, preventing a comprehensive view of the organization’s operations and patient population.
• Technical complexities: Navigating the intricacies of EHR systems, financial software and the UDS reporting platform itself can pose significant technical challenges in getting systems to generate the correct data sets, particularly for organizations with limited IT resources or expertise.
• Manual data entry and error-prone processes: Reliance on manual data entry and lack of automated processes is a time-consuming process, tying up valuable resources on tedious work that can also introduce human error, compromising the accuracy and integrity of the reported data.
• Lack of staff training and engagement: Inadequate training and limited staff engagement can lead to misunderstandings or misinterpretations of data collection and reporting requirements, resulting in inaccurate submissions that don’t capture the full quality of an FQHC’s services.
• Changing requirements: UDS regulations change every year, meaning FQHCs need to annually invest additional resources into keeping up with the latest updates.

Identifying these pain points can help FQHCs develop targeted strategies and leverage available resources to address the specific challenges they face, paving the way for more efficient and accurate UDS reporting and a greater benefit for the FQHCs themselves.

Lightening the load

How can FQHCs ease the burden of UDS reporting? And what modifications can be put into place to turn the onerous process of data collection and management into a source of potential added value for the organization?

There are five critical areas FQHCs can improve on to simplify the UDS reporting process and position themselves for success in an increasingly data-driven marketplace:

1. Creating a data governance committee: Establish a cross-functional data governance committee that brings together stakeholders from various departments, including clinical, operational, financial and quality teams. This committee should be responsible for overseeing how data is coded, collected and managed, identifying areas for improvement and driving organizational alignment.
2. Technical improvements to the system: Conduct a comprehensive analysis of data workflows and map the journey of data from its point of capture to its ultimate destination within the reporting systems. This exercise can help identify system limitations, bottlenecks, redundancies and opportunities to streamline processes.
3. Monthly data analysis: Pull and discuss data every month in order to identify issues and squash them early. Data can be compared against prior-year trends and, in the case of variance, can be tracked and analyzed to determine why the variance is occurring. It’s much easier to proactively address issues than to try troubleshooting late in the year with the February 15 deadline fast approaching.
4. Data quality audits: Implement regular data quality audits to validate the accuracy and completeness of the data being collected and reported. These audits can involve sampling techniques, cross-referencing multiple data sources and leveraging data analytics tools to identify discrepancies or anomalies.
5. Staff training and engagement: Invest in ongoing staff training and engagement initiatives to ensure that all stakeholders understand the importance of accurate data collection and reporting. Additionally, by identifying early in the process who is responsible for what, more tasks can be managed in a timely fashion, and everyone will be working from the same playbook from the start.

By addressing these key issues, organizations can begin to transform their once-dreaded UDS workload into a valuable chance for growth and operational improvement.

Turning challenge into opportunity

Easing the pain of reporting is a benefit in itself, but how can FQHCs take it a step further and actually spark growth through the UDS process? There are a number of steps health organizations can take to successfully harness data to their strategic advantage.

Start by adding UDS reporting to your monthly tasks, discussed at the executive and board level. Integrate UDS into your regular reports, like financial and clinical reporting, so it becomes part of the overall reporting package. This keeps the data top of mind and helps ensure it’s getting the attention it deserves.

Regularly compare your UDS data to peer organizations — this information is public for a good reason. If your numbers seem off compared to similar health centers in your area, this could be a sign of a potential issue worth investigating.

Don’t limit the comparisons to just competitors. Check your UDS data against your own services and programming. Does your own internal reporting — and gut check with your clinicians — match what UDS is telling you? Every opportunity to uncover discrepancies in the data is a valuable clue that can lead to streamlined operations.

Speaking of streamlining, there are a number of different overlapping data points in most health centers’ workstreams — UDS, EHR, payroll, accounting and Population Health System, to name a few. These competing systems can create confusion, so it’s essential that your data governance committee choose which systems will be your source of truth for different needs.

Ultimately, when you start seeing UDS reporting as less of a once-a-year burden and more as an ongoing process, you’ll uncover areas of your operation that can be made more efficient, and those revelations can create opportunities for growth.

Additional areas for adding value

Embracing the opportunities offered by UDS can provide more than just peace of mind for your organization. By shifting to a value-producing approach to audit preparation, your organization can derive a number of tangible benefits from the practice.

Automating and integrating data to improve operational efficiency

Manually pulling together data is a time-intensive process that ties up key resources just to meet regulatory deadlines. But shifting to an automated data collection system and implementing integration tools that can pull data from all of your systems can minimize data handling while improving accuracy. This provides value by reducing preparation time and staff costs, while also freeing up resources to focus on patient care or operational improvements. Additionally, real-time access to your data can be used to monitor performance on an ongoing basis, not just during UDS prep time.

Turning UDS preparation into a continuous quality improvement cycle

UDS preparation for many health centers is a reactive process, with efforts focused merely on submitting a complete product or avoiding UDS quality control questions in a rush to get the process done. But by using the process as a catalyst for ongoing quality improvement, you can have regular visibility into actionable data to monitor improvement in clinical care, financial reporting and operational processes, leading to better outcomes for your organization.

Using UDS data to enhance patient care with higher-quality reporting

Your data can help create actionable insights that can improve the quality of the care you provide. Your preparations already include reporting on standard clinical quality measures, which matter to funders, your community, and — most of all — your patients. UDS provides a valuable opportunity for leadership to monitor these quality measures on an ongoing basis and take steps to improve them before undesirable trends are set in stone. Don’t just consider these isolated reporting activities — this data can be used to make decisions in real time.

Improving quality metrics are often tied to reimbursement under value-based care models, and may generate quality incentive payments from payers, so your bottom line benefits as well.

Improving staff efficiency and engagement through process standardization

UDS preparation can overburden staff, leading to burnout, inefficiency and potential reporting errors. But a standardized process with streamlined workflows for data collection, review and submission can help ensure smoother operations, reduced redundancy and less stressed-out staff.

Involve clinical staff in audit readiness programs so they can grasp the link between checking boxes in the EHR, day-to-day care delivery and quality metrics that are ultimately reported publicly. This also leads to a more proactive quality-first culture, decreasing the need for a last-minute scramble to gather and process relevant data come February.

Ultimately, UDS offers your health center a wealth of opportunities. It’s up to your organization to determine what that might mean for your operations. How much of a role UDS plays in your day-to-day may differ among organizations, but whatever your desired level of involvement is, it’s important to choose a vision, document it and work toward implementation.

How Wipfli can help

If your FQHC is ready to embrace a data-driven mindset and leverage the power of the UDS, we can help. From establishing data governance committee charters to setting up new standards for data compliance and transmission, our dedicated professionals have extensive experience working with FQHCs to streamline operations and encourage growth.

We can offer EHR and finance report configuration, UDS dashboard configurations that integrate into your preexisting reporting, audit your data entry workflows and more. Contact Wipfli today to get started with solutions that can help you grow and provide for your patients.