“If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.”
— paraphrased from Lord Kelvin, Popular Lectures and Addresses (1889)
That principle is more than a century old, but it describes exactly what drives our work at Aptive. And in a modern health care environment — where technology is inseparable from clinical practice — the ability to measure, analyze and act on data is what separates good intentions from real improvement.
At Aptive, improving patient care begins with understanding how systems, data and people interact at every point of care. When technology fails to support providers effectively, patient care suffers. This is why we focus on measurable impact as a catalyst for better outcomes.
Aptive works with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Client Portfolio Management Office (CPMO), supporting its Data and Analytics Team in translating data-driven insights into meaningful improvements for Veterans. Through VA’s issue management process within the Electronic Health Record (EHR) modernization program, we help reduce provider burden, improve system performance and enable better patient care.
VA health care generates vast amounts of data, from clinical records and operational metrics to system performance logs and user feedback. This data serves two crucial purposes. For individual Veterans, it provides a complete view of a patient’s health over time, enabling informed clinical decision-making. For the VA system as a whole, it reveals how care is delivered across the enterprise, highlighting inefficiencies, risks and opportunities to improve services.
But data alone does not create value. The ability to measure, analyze, interpret and act on that data is what drives real improvement. This is where our team comes in. Our team focuses on identifying the metrics that truly impact patient care and turning those measurements into actionable insight.
Every issue ticket submitted in the EHR system represents more than a technical glitch; it’s a disruption in a provider’s workflow during a patient interaction. When clinicians have to wrestle with technology problems, their attention is pulled away from caring for Veterans. The issue management process exists to capture, track and resolve these disruptions. Its importance goes beyond fixing individual problems, it provides a window into how the system is performing as a whole and where it might be falling short for providers.
Historically, teams addressed each issue in isolation. While solving individual tickets is necessary, that approach made it hard to recognize recurring problems or emerging trends. We’ve transformed this process by applying advanced analytics to understand issues at scale. Instead of reacting to issues one by one, we identify patterns across thousands of tickets. For example, by implementing centralized real-time dashboards, we’ve improved visibility into system issues as they arise, allowing VA leaders to address root causes proactively rather than constantly firefighting.
Our data and analytics team brings together a broad range of expertise, like data engineering, analytics, automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and secure data architecture, all grounded in a deep understanding of health care workflows. But tools and skills alone aren’t enough. Every analysis is guided by a practical question: How will this help providers and Veterans?
A key focus of our work is identifying meaningful patterns across large volumes of issue data. We examine both the numbers and the stories behind them. By analyzing structured data alongside unstructured text, such as clinicians’ written descriptions of problems, we can group thousands of individual issues into common themes. This allows stakeholders to prioritize systemic fixes rather than chase one-off issues.
We apply automation and AI thoughtfully, only where they add genuine value. For instance, we’ve automated previously manual reporting processes, cutting report generation times by more than 70% in several key workflows. That means staff spend less time compiling data and more time implementing improvements. Critically, we always pair technology with human expertise. Our analysts work alongside VA clinicians to ensure that proposed solutions make sense in real-world clinical contexts. The tools are only as good as the judgment guiding them.
We don’t develop analytics solutions in isolation, we build them alongside the people doing the work. A core strength of our approach is close collaboration with VA clinicians, provider subject matter experts, clinical informaticists and operational leaders throughout the issue management lifecycle.
By involving frontline health care providers and decision-makers, we ensure our insights are not only technically sound but also clinically relevant. Data alone can’t tell the whole story; context from nurses, doctors and administrative staff is invaluable. This collaborative approach helps us focus on solutions that truly improve provider workflows. When the people who deliver care are part of the solution, the outcomes are better for everyone.
Through our work with VA’s CPMO, we are helping move the organization from reactive problem-solving to proactive system improvement. By measuring how issues arise, how they impact providers and how effectively they are resolved, we bring greater transparency and accountability to the EHR modernization effort.
In practice, this approach has produced tangible results:
Faster insights
Faster insights
Replacing manual, siloed reports with dynamic dashboards has cut reporting times by 70%, freeing up staff to act on insights rather than spend time gathering data.
Greater visibility
Greater visibility
A unified dashboard view of issues gives everyone (from clinic managers to executives) a real-time picture of system performance. Problems are spotted and addressed sooner, with clearer ownership at every level.
Support at scale
Support at scale
We enabled dashboard-driven workflows for help desk operations supporting more than 80,000 users, achieving faster triage and resolution when technology issues arise. At this scale, even minor efficiency gains translate into thousands of hours saved and more timely support for frontline clinicians.
The result is more than just better metrics on paper. It is greater trust in the data, faster and smarter decision-making, and technology that actively supports clinical care. When providers can rely on the tools in front of them, they spend less time troubleshooting and more time with their patients.
At Aptive data is a means to an end, and that end is improved care for Veterans. By measuring what matters and applying analytics with purpose, we help ensure technology truly enables better care, which is exactly what Lord Kelvin’s principle demands: if you can measure it, you can improve it.
We are proud to stand with VA in that mission. Every dashboard we build, every analysis we conduct and every issue we help resolve is driven by a single goal: to empower those who care for Veterans with the insights they need to deliver the best possible care.
This is the power of a mission-driven analytics partnership. And we’re just getting started. We will continue to innovate, collaborate and strive for excellence so that Veterans and their providers always experience the very best of what data-informed health care can achieve.
About the Authors
Jessica Propst and Chevas Yeoman from Artemis ARC, along with Derek Wilkinson, Konnor Clark and Gabriel Odom from Aptive, work with the VA Client Portfolio Management Office (CPMO), supporting its Data and Analytics Team in translating data-driven insights into meaningful improvements for Veterans.
