Patent ID: 7917377

Claim:
A method for automatically generating performance measurement information for health care organizations, the method comprising: mining, with a machine, free text, the mining on the free text comprising mining for health care data related to a health care guideline for a patient, the mining using medical knowledge, the medical knowledge associated with the health care guideline, the free text being stored physician notes, the mining comprising: gleaning, as part of the mining for the patient, a plurality of pieces of evidence about the patient including at least one of the pieces being from the free text; using, as part of the mining, probabilistic information, the probabilistic information comprising chances of occurrence for possible values of a variable being mined for the patient, the possible values being derived from the pieces of evidence such that a plurality of possible values and respective chances are provided for the variable; calculating, as part of the mining, the chances from probabilities assigned to the pieces of evidence from the free text for the patient, the probabilities being less than 100% and greater than 0%; as part of the mining, assigning, as the health care data for the variable for the patient, a value for the variable with the chance of occurrence greater than other chances for the possible values for the variable, the value being different than the respective chance; populating, as part of the mining, a data source with at least some health care data mined from the free text, a structure of the mined data in the data source being different from a structure of the free text so that compliance querying may be performed using the data source, the structure of the mined data in the data source comprising the at least some health care data for the variable separate from the free text; querying, with the machine executing a query script defining a plurality of constraints and formulated by the machine, the data source having the at least some data populated from the free text of the stored physician notes, the querying based on the health care guideline; and outputting performance measurement information indicating a level of compliance with the health care guideline based on the querying.