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In an effort to boost its business intelligence capabilities, Cerner Corporation will acquire Clairvia, a health information technology provider of software that offers predictive models driven by data stored in electronic health records (EHRs).

The deal, which was announced October 7, reflects the growing need for companies like Cerner to offer their healthcare customers a better way to analyze relevant clinical data through business intelligence software that helps providers improve patient care quality, patient safety, and staff productivity as well as enhance reimbursement management systems.

Plans are to integrate Clairvia's Care Value Management suite into Cerner's broader cloud-based and interoperability platforms, Cerner Healthe Intent and CareAware. That will allow Cerner to offer a comprehensive suite of resource management solutions.

"The Clairvia solutions are enabling clients through interactive dashboards, detailed analytics, and ... point of care solutions to assign the right staff to the right patient to deliver desired outcomes," David Pierre, Cerner's managing director of workforce management, told InformationWeek Healthcare. "Cerner's significant breadth across the health community, including acute care, ambulatory, physician practices, and long-term care, allows us to optimize Clairvia's solutions outside of acute care and the ambulatory space."

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Pierre also said the acquisition will help Cerner provide better analytical tools that will help healthcare providers in their quest to become Accountable Care Organizations. Such ACOs will focus on pay-for-performance where providers will be reimbursed on quality and not quantity of care.

"Clairvia's outcomes-driven methodology is based on delivering quality patient care outcomes and leads to more rapid recovery and higher reimbursement, not just reducing labor costs. Clairvia was first-to-market with Care Value Analytics that identifies outcomes related to staffing and true staffing costs per patient," Pierre explained.

Executives at Cerner said the acquisition will bring tangible benefits to Cerner. For instance, Clairvia's algorithms allow healthcare organizations to control their cost by predicting near future needs based on current patient conditions and schedule events and trends that allow them to build greater efficiency into their clinical workflow.

These models will enhance the significant interoperable and quality work Cerner has done in its Healthe Intent cloud-based platform.

"EHRs document patient needs and expected courses of care while resource management systems store nurse competency, skills and availability data," Beth Pickard, Clairvia president and chief executive officer, said in a statement. "We integrate those two databases in real time, at the point of care. Cerner's resources and dedication to improving health opens the door for us to create additional solutions that enable healthcare organizations to accurately forecast demand and to proactively align staffing resources to meet that demand."

More than 400 organizations worldwide use Clairvia's tools. Its clients range in size from large healthcare systems to specialty physician practices. One of the advantages to Clairvia's tools, Cerner officials said, is that their software is EHR-system agnostic and integrates with numerous platforms, including Cerner Millennium.

While financial details of the deal were not disclosed, the transaction is expected to close in mid-October and Clairvia associates in North Carolina will continue to remain in Durham, where its headquarters are located.

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