The message seemed to resonate. In an informal, real-time poll of about 150 people in a breakout session about making analytics a strategic imperative, a slim majority said that their organization's analytics vendor is more important than its EHR vendor.

A possible reason? "Availability of data has never been a problem at Geisinger," said Geisinger Health System CEO Glenn D. Steele Jr., MD. The big issue there, and at so many other provider organizations, is usability of data.

Crystal Run Healthcare, a physician-owned multispecialty practice based in Middletown, N.Y., has had a NextGen Healthcare Information Systems EHR since 1999. Late last year, the 300-physician group installed its first enterprise data warehouse, bringing business intelligence not only to the billing department, but also to human resources and materials management. EHR data warehouses do not always do that, noted CMO and CMIO Gregory Spencer, MD.

"BI is moving more from IT to analysis," Spencer said, "and from financial reporting to clinical guidance." It is his job to figure out how and what to measure and to display the results in way that will be useful to his fellow physicians. And the job will only get more difficult, as Spencer expects to start integrating data from social media and genomics in the next 3-5 years.

[See also: Health Catalyst shows Midas touch.]

Mission Health System in Asheville, N.C., is in a similar position. "We are shifting our culture to use information to drive change, even without an EDW," said CIO Jon Brown. "The organization is finally ready for an EDW."

It took a while to get to this point, despite strong clinician and administrator demand for data in recent years. "Data became cool at Mission Health," said CIO Jon Brown. Everyone asked for it but nobody did much with it, so nothing changed.

As part of a nascent three-year plan, Mission Health launched an accountable care organization in July, and Brown hopes to have it operational in the next couple of months. The goal is to begin actively managing population health by January 2016 and to break even on Medicare patients in a rapidly aging community that is seeing an influx of retirees moving in from overcrowded Florida, Brown said.

[See also: Partners and Health Catalyst join forces.]

"Stay focused on the vision," Brown said, explaining that with data and analytics, more is not always better, and that fellow CIOs would do well not to get bogged down in producing reports for the sake of producing reports. "Data has got to drive change," he said.