250 providers, 7 practice groups, 3 EHR systems. One reporting view that works.
Healthcare analytics for MSOs comes down to one problem: practice groups on different systems, all measured the same way.
US Specialists Management was manually pulling data from separate EHR, practice management, accounting, and HR systems and consolidating it all into PowerPoint before every board meeting. See how automated dashboards across all 7 groups changed that.
Who this case study is for
This case study is for technology leaders, COOs, and operations leaders at urology MSOs or multi-specialty management services organizations running multiple practice groups on different EHR systems, who need a unified reporting layer that leadership and the board can rely on, and who are spending more time building reports than acting on them.
Background
US Specialists Management (USSM) is a management services organization overseeing 7 independent urology practice groups with roughly 250 providers in total. Each practice had grown on its own before joining the MSO, which meant each one brought its own EHR environment with it. The result was reporting spread across Veradigm, ModMed, and Athena over the 7 groups, with no shared platform and no unified way to see performance across the organization.
Jonathon Graham is USSM’s Vice President of Technology, responsible for tactical and strategic oversight across all 7 groups. He had been aware of Focus through the Veradigm integration partnership. His background was on the technical integration side of healthcare IT, so when USSM was ready to solve its reporting problem, that existing familiarity with Focus’s data work was the starting point.
The expertise across the team is very attractive and evident from early engagement. That’s where Focus shines.
Jonathon Graham
Vice President of Technology, USSM
The challenge
What reporting looks like when 7 practices never had to share a platform
Every practice in the MSO had grown independently, building its own systems, processes, and reporting habits along the way. So by the time USSM needed a view of performance across all 7 groups, nothing existed to support it. Each reporting cycle meant pulling data by hand from every group’s practice management system, then from accounting, then from HR, and stitching it all together in a PowerPoint. Assembling a single board report could take days of staff time before anyone could even start analyzing it.
The time cost was only part of it. The manual process created two problems that fed each other. Manual consolidation introduces errors, and when leadership can’t trust the numbers, board meetings get spent questioning the data instead of acting on it. And because every metric lived in 7 separate places, any change to how something was calculated had to be redone by hand in all of them. As Jonathon put it, the manual process made it hard to push a change across the enterprise. Something that should take minutes took hours, and even then consistency wasn’t guaranteed.
- Every report required starting from scratch. There were no automated pulls, no persistent dashboards, no way to get back to the same view next week without rebuilding it. USSM staff were spending tens of hours per group per month just gathering data before they could analyze anything.
- Manual consolidation created errors that undermined trust. Pulling from multiple separate systems by hand and combining them in PowerPoint introduced the kind of entry errors that are hard to catch and harder to explain at a board meeting. When the numbers don’t hold up to scrutiny, confidence in the whole reporting process erodes.
- Changes had to be replicated 7 times. Any update to a metric or calculation had to be manually applied to each group’s reporting separately. There was no way to make a change once and roll it out across the enterprise. This made standardization nearly impossible to maintain.
- Leadership had no real-time visibility. The only time leadership had a complete picture was the day before a board meeting, when everything was finally assembled. There was no way to monitor performance throughout the month or catch a trend early enough to act on it.
How we approached it
Multi-EHR data normalization across 3 systems, built by a team that understood what was being asked
The challenge at USSM wasn’t just a technology problem. It was a data normalization problem. The 3 EHR systems don’t store the same information the same way. A financial metric in Veradigm and the same metric in Athena might be calculated differently, labeled differently, and stored in different data structures. Building a unified reporting view means more than connecting the systems. It means building a data model that makes those systems comparable, so that when leadership looks at a dashboard, they’re seeing the same metric calculated the same way regardless of which group it came from.
Focus began with discovery: working with Jonathon and the USSM team to map where data lived across each of the 7 groups, understand what KPIs leadership and the board needed to see, and establish the logic that would make cross-group comparisons trustworthy. From there, the work was sequential: connect the systems, normalize the data, build the dashboards, validate everything before it goes live.
Natalie Nelson, VP of Success at Focus, coordinated the engagement across all 7 groups. With 7 independent practices each requiring their own data connections to be established, tested, and validated, the project management layer mattered as much as the technical one. Jonathon called her out specifically, and extended the same observation to the whole team: the responsiveness, the expertise, and the willingness to work at whatever pace and depth each group required were consistent across everyone involved.
Shout out to Natalie specifically. She’s super responsive, very organized and pleasant to work with. Building and normalizing the data with Will and his team — they’ve been very responsive and demonstrate a level of expertise that is reassuring that we’ve chosen the right partner..
Jonathon Graham
Vice President of Technology, USSM
- Secure data connections to each group’s EHR, PM, accounting, and HR systems. Each group’s data sources were connected individually, tested, and validated before being brought into the unified model.
- A normalized data model across all 7 groups. Different systems calculate the same metrics differently. Focus built a unified model so every KPI is calculated consistently, regardless of which EHR it came from. That consistency is what makes cross-group comparison trustworthy.
- MSO reporting dashboards designed for how USSM leadership and the board use data. The goal wasn’t generic reporting. It was building views that leadership could monitor throughout the month and walk into a board meeting with, without needing to format or assemble anything.
- Automatic updates once dashboards are approved. Once a dashboard is built and validated, it refreshes on its own. No rebuilding every reporting cycle. No manual pulls. The data is always current.
- Changes that propagate across all 7 groups at once. When USSM adjusts a metric or updates a calculation, it updates everywhere automatically. The change propagation problem that made standardization so difficult before is gone.
The outcome
From a manual PowerPoint scramble to continuous visibility across 250 providers
The shift USSM is experiencing is both operational and cultural. On the operational side, the manual reporting work that was consuming tens of hours per group per month is being replaced by automated dashboards that stay current without anyone touching them. Across 7 groups, Jonathon noted that the combined time savings could offset an FTE or more of manual labor, a significant number for an MSO that was allocating real staff time to a process that shouldn’t require it.
The cultural shift may matter just as much. When leadership can monitor performance throughout the month rather than scrambling to verify numbers the day before a board meeting, the dynamic of leadership conversations changes. Jonathon described the most noticeable improvement as the reduction in pressure: the data is already teed up, it can be monitored continuously, and the surprise and panic factor that used to define board prep day has been significantly reduced.
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| Reporting model | Data pulled by hand from each group’s EHR, PM, accounting, and HR systems, then consolidated in PowerPoint | Automated dashboards that refresh continuously into one view across all 7 groups |
| Updating a metric across all 7 groups | Rebuilt by hand in each group, 7 separate times | Changed once, propagates to every group automatically |
| Time spent gathering data | Tens of hours per group per month | Dashboards stay current on their own, with that time projected to go back to the team |
| Staffing impact | Enough repetitive manual labor to absorb real staff capacity | Projected to offset 1 FTE or more of manual labor across the 7 groups combined |
| Board prep | A last-minute scramble to verify numbers the day before the meeting | A review of data that is already current and assembled |
| Data accuracy | Manual entry errors that were hard to catch and eroded trust in the numbers | Automated pulls remove manual entry errors |
The most noticeable improvement is just the pressure side of it — having less reactivity. The fact that all of that is teed up regularly and can be closely monitored minimizes that surprise and panic factor towards board meeting day.
Jonathon Graham
Vice President of Technology, USSM
What this means as USSM continues to grow
One of the quieter advantages of a properly built reporting infrastructure is what happens when the next practice joins the MSO. The data model is already built. The dashboards are already designed. The normalization logic is already in place. Onboarding a new group means establishing its data connections and validating the output, not rebuilding the entire reporting framework from scratch. For a growing MSO that measures success by its ability to add practices without adding proportional overhead, that compounding efficiency is part of the value.
Jonathon also noted that USSM’s relationship with Focus extends beyond analytics. The same team that built the reporting infrastructure is the managed IT partner supporting the operational technology that underpins all 7 practices. That integration across services means fewer handoffs, fewer accountability gaps, and a single partner who understands the full picture.
Frequently asked questions
How do you unify reporting across a healthcare MSO with multiple different EHR systems?
The foundational step is data normalization: building a model that pulls from each EHR, PM, accounting, and HR system and calculates every metric consistently, regardless of source. Different systems store the same information differently, so two practices on different EHRs can look like they’re reporting the same KPI when they’re calculating it differently. Focus built this normalized data model for USSM across its 3 EHR systems, Veradigm, ModMed, and Athena, so that every dashboard shows the same metric calculated the same way for all 7 groups.
What is the Veradigm integration partner relationship and why does it matter for healthcare analytics?
Focus is an integration partner with Veradigm, which means there is an established, tested technical connection between the Focus Insights platform and Veradigm’s EHR and PM systems. For MSOs like USSM where Veradigm is the dominant EHR, this matters because the integration isn’t being figured out during implementation. It’s already built and validated. That shortens deployment time and reduces the risk of data connection issues that could compromise reporting accuracy.
How much time does unified healthcare analytics save for a multi-practice MSO?
Results depend on the number of groups and the complexity of the existing manual process. For USSM, with 7 independent practice groups across 3 EHR systems, the anticipated savings are in the tens of hours per group per month. Across 7 groups, Jonathon Graham estimated that the combined time savings could offset the equivalent of 1 or more full-time employees’ worth of manual reporting labor. The driver is eliminating the cycle of pulling, formatting, reconciling, and rebuilding reports that happens every reporting period under a manual model.
How does automated healthcare board reporting work for MSO leadership?
Automated board reporting means dashboards that pull from all connected systems, refresh continuously, and are ready to view at any point in the month rather than only on the day they’re assembled. For USSM, this replaced a process where leadership was scrambling to verify data immediately before board meetings. With automated dashboards in place, performance can be monitored throughout the month, trends are visible before they become surprises, and board prep becomes a review rather than an assembly exercise.
What makes healthcare analytics different from general business intelligence tools?
Healthcare analytics requires understanding how clinical, financial, and operational data are structured inside specific EHR and practice management systems, systems that weren’t designed to produce business intelligence outputs natively. A general BI tool can connect to a data source, but without the domain knowledge to map healthcare-specific fields correctly, normalize clinical and financial metrics appropriately, and build views that reflect how healthcare organizations operate, the output won’t be trustworthy. Focus brings that healthcare-specific expertise to every Insights engagement, which is what allows a project like USSM’s, with 3 EHR systems across 7 groups, to produce reliable, consistent reporting.
Can a urology MSO use the same analytics platform as it adds new practice groups?
Yes, and this is one of the structural advantages of building a proper analytics infrastructure. Once the data model is established and the dashboards are designed, adding a new practice group means establishing its data connections and validating the output, not redesigning the whole reporting framework. The normalization logic and dashboard architecture carry over. For a growing MSO, this means each new practice benefits from everything that was learned and built for the groups before it, rather than requiring the analytics work to start from scratch each time.
Managing multiple practice groups on different EHR systems?
Here’s what unified reporting looks like.
If your MSO is still building board packets by hand, replicating the same updates across multiple groups, or asking your team to spend hours gathering data before they can analyze any of it, that’s time and accuracy you shouldn’t be losing. A unified analytics layer built on a normalized data model changes both.
Focus works with urology and specialty MSOs that are ready to move from manual reporting to automated visibility. If you want to see what that looks like for an organization your size, let’s talk.
