Q&A with Q-Centrix Senior Vice President of Enterprise Business Development, Eric Crites
Can you tell us about the vision and mission of Q-Centrix and how the company is positioned to transform clinical data management in the healthcare industry?
Q-Centrix and our hospital and health system partners are united by a shared mission: to ensure safer, consistent, and high-quality healthcare for all. Central to this mission, and what we know better than anyone in the industry, is clinical data. The driving force behind improved patient outcomes, strategic growth, clinical research, and more.
Our solutions address a variety of clinical data needs, across verticals, including: quality measurement and improvement, cardiovascular, oncology, trauma, and research.
This clinical data expertise, relationships with over 1,200 hospital partners, and willingness to “see clinical data differently” positions us to innovate in ways that are, and will continue to, transform healthcare.
Q-Centrix offers the first Enterprise Clinical Data Management (eCDM™) approach. Could you explain what eCDM™ entails and how it differs from traditional clinical data management approaches?
The U.S. healthcare industry is spending an estimated $2.8 billion on clinical data every year, so the value of managing that data at an enterprise level is immense—and growing. That’s why Q-Centrix built the first unified technology platform to accompany the largest team of clinical experts in the industry. When combined with our enterprise analytics and insights, our approach empowers more than 120 enterprise partners to unlock the value of their clinical data. This approach is unique in the industry; it focuses on the broader exponential power of clinical data—not simply checking the box for registry and quality reporting metrics. We enable strategic growth, operational efficiency, revenue generation, performance improvement, and more through clinical data.
How does Q-Centrix’s market-leading software and team of clinical data experts work together to ensure the highest quality and security of clinical data?
Clinical data is healthcare’s most valuable asset, but only if it is accurate, consistent, and complete. This has always been important for patient care, but it’s becoming even more important as healthcare organizations rely more and more on using clinical data to train AI. Q-Centrix understands this and leverages a risk-based, dynamic approach to ensure the industry’s highest data integrity throughout the entire data lifecycle. We understand that the highest quality data comes when people and technology work hand-in-hand. We spend over 10,000 hours a month on quality checks. We also take data security very seriously. We’ve established strict policies and protocols to ensure data security, and we’re proud to be SOC2 + HITRUST compliant.
Q-Apps® is designed to help hospitals and health systems harness the full potential of their clinical data. Could you describe the main features and benefits of Q-Apps® for healthcare organizations?
Q-Apps, our AI-enabled, cloud-based clinical data information system, is a comprehensive solution that centralizes clinical data management activities. Through one login, hospitals and health systems have actionable, high-fidelity data at their fingertips, to guide decision-making, improve patient care, and improve participation in clinical research.
With over 1,200 hospital partners, how does Q-Centrix leverage its extensive network to continuously improve its data curation and management solutions?
From partnering with 9 of the 10 largest health systems in the country, we have the experience of working with and understanding millions of clinical data sets. We use that collective knowledge to discover new ways of using clinical data, help our partners benchmark against other organizations, and even facilitate discussions with healthcare leaders so they can collaborate on ways to improve patient care.
Can you share some insights on how Q-Centrix uses AI and NLP engines to enhance clinical data expertise and structure unstructured data?
For years, Q-Centrix has used automation and natural language processing (NLP) in collaboration with clinical data experts to assist clinicians. With our robust community of healthcare facilities, clinical expertise for model training, and modern technology platform, we’re best equipped to scale AI—the most difficult part of the AI journey. That’s why we believe in leveraging AI’s potential while retaining human intervention to mitigate risks.
Data security is paramount in healthcare. How does Q-Centrix maintain its market-leading security standards, particularly through SOC 2 + HITRUST compliance?
As healthcare data breaches continue to make headlines, the industry is seeing over and over again just how important data security is. Since 2020, Q-Centrix has been SOC 2 + HITRUST compliant—the highest security requirement in the industry. This recognition requires an organization to demonstrate the ability to fully protect patient data and other sensitive, personally identifiable information (PII) in accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’s privacy and security provisions via a 12-month audit by a third-party examiner. By complying with these requirements, and maintaining a strong security culture built around following robust data security best practices, we ensure that we stay at the forefront of cybersecurity.
How does the Q-Centrix eCDM™ platform help health systems turn fragmented clinical data into actionable information, and what impact does this have on patient care and operational efficiency?
You’d be surprised just how many healthcare organizations lack a centralized approach to clinical data management. Our Enterprise Clinical Data Management (eCDM) approach consolidates an otherwise fragmented system through a combination of market-leading technology, clinical expertise, data integrity, and analytics. At its core, eCDM enables hospitals and health systems to customize their data sets and use their data to drive more performance improvement, improved patient care, and more effective clinical research.
A white paper from the company mentions the power of artificial intelligence in elevating operational quality. Could you provide examples of how AI has been utilized in Q-Centrix’s solutions to drive performance and efficiency?
Q-Centrix has the benefit of the most efficient and refined model in the market that produces the highest fidelity data. That gives us the flexibility to focus on identifying where automation will offer the greatest—and most accurate—benefit to our partners.
Examples of how AI has been used in operational efficiency, noted in the white paper, include quality assessment, identifying best practices, workforce capacity planning, and extracting meaning from unstructured data.
However, it is imperative to note that we believe AI elevates the human role; it does not eliminate it. In fact, our model keeps the human at the center of the data curation process to ensure the highest level of data integrity.
Can you discuss the importance of timely data in healthcare and how Q-Centrix ensures that its data is both timely and actionable for its partners?
It has been our experience that hospitals may face at least a one-year clinical data backlog in oncology. To put that into context, an FDA report indicated that there were 83 oncology-related approvals in 2023. So, the majority of hospitals are determining care processes for their cancer patients based on outdated data. This statistic is actually shocking. As we all know, a lot can happen in a year, especially in the oncology research and treatment space. Accurate and timely data in an area like oncology aren’t important, they’re life-saving.
What future trends do you foresee in clinical data management, and how is Q-Centrix preparing to address these trends and challenges?
We expect that labor costs and shrinking margins will continue to be an issue for hospitals and health systems. That’s why we help hospitals use their clinical data to assess spend and drive operational efficiency and ROI. We will also continue to expand our Q-Centrix Research Network, which creates a new revenue stream for hospitals. As these revenue streams increase, more hospitals will understand that they too can leverage their data for research, while mitigating financial pressures.
How does Q-Centrix support its partners in meeting regulatory requirements and improving their reporting capabilities?
We often hear from our partners that understanding all the different reimbursement programs, accreditation requirements, and rating systems is way more than a full-time job. We make it our job to understand the sometimes confusing array of quality and regulatory data and help our partners focus on the metrics that matter most when maximizing reimbursement, maintaining accreditation, and performing well on industry benchmarks. We’re proud to report that our hospitals have a 10% better CMS Star rating on average when compared to their peers.
Could you elaborate on the role of data scientists, project managers, and IT experts at Q-Centrix in delivering comprehensive clinical data solutions?
While Q-Centrix is a healthcare company, we are also a data company. We bring together our team members as a community with shared values, whether that be in a clinical role or an IT role. Our data scientists are actively looking at how we structure data to not only create automation and efficiency but also serve as a predictive tool that will help hospitals and clinicians draw meaningful conclusions. It’s an exciting time to be at the intersection of healthcare and technology.
Finally, what is next for Q-Centrix? Are there any upcoming innovations or expansions that you can share with us?
One of the cornerstones of Q-Centrix is “perpetual learning”. We don’t wait for what’s next; we identify it. Our team of data engineers and clinicians are actively pursuing how AI can transform healthcare, furthering our ability to customize data sets for research advancements.
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