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Healthcare Data & Analytics

Our current conversation: Creating value from healthcare data analytics

09/21/2022

by Amy Goad and Catherine Terilli

Last week, we attended the Health Catalyst’s Annual Healthcare Analytics Summit. In addition to conversations about new products, technology trends, and outsourcing, we talked about some of the main challenges facing the industry and—most importantly—how to respond. Our recommendation? Effective healthcare data analytics governance and insights can give you the tools you need to make informed decisions that impact every aspect of your organization.

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Financial pressure and workforce burnout are top-of-mind for any healthcare professional today. Hiring and retaining the right people, implementing the right technology, providing quality care, and maintaining facilities isn’t cheap. Inflation is only complicating the equation as traditional margins shrink and expenses rise. Couple that with the fact that physicians, nurses, clinical staff, and administrators are facing record levels of burnout. Burnout isn’t only impacting your ability to hire and retain great people; it has the potential to impact your overall patient experience.

How can you prepare to respond?

Combating these challenges starts with finding the opportunities for process and technology investments that are most likely to create impact, including:

• Workforce Management. Recruiting and retaining talent is at the forefront of every healthcare system’s mind. While your clinical staff may need to meet in-person, more administrative teams are moving into remote or hybrid work models. This shift is another contributing factor to the workforce management challenge. How do you retain top-level talent? By empowering them with the tools, systems, and teams they need to deliver exceptional patient care. Taking a more flexible approach to remote work may also open up new possibilities for finding and keeping talent.
• Technology and AI Application. We have access to more technology than ever before. The biggest question is: What do we do with it? Implementing disjointed or shortsighted technology is a costly, frustrating experience. Leveraging the right technology, however, can ultimately increase operating efficiencies while improving patient outcomes.
• Value-Based Care. The current state of adoption of value-based care models poses a challenge to healthcare systems as they navigate moving to value-based care while not all systems and financial incentives are aligned. During this transitory time, how can you adjust your current workflows to operate as effectively as possible? What can you start, stop, or continue doing to thoughtfully move into this new care model?

These responses may seem both intuitive (of course you want to retain employees) and out-of-reach (how do actually build a program that makes it happen?). We recommend starting with what you already have—your data—to help you make informed decisions in how you respond.

Response considerations for healthcare analytics organizations

1. Consider Your Operating Model.

Your data is only as good as the governance and people behind it. Before you make data-driven decisions, it’s imperative that you understand how different tools and technologies interact across functions. As records and information pass through your organization, does every person have the same understanding of how data should be handled? Are there quality checkpoints in place along the way? Something that may seem arbitrary to one function may become a decision point for your technology, administrative, or executive teams. Taking the time to establish data governance now will empower your organization to confidently make prudent decisions later.

After establishing a strong data governance foundation, your organization should take the time to define how work will be prioritized and, after a project or initiative has been approved, what your delivery methodology will look like. When these expectations are set up front, people across your organization will be equipped to make changes according to your standard operating model.

2. Plan Before Investing.

If you don’t have a designated data and analytics practice, consider outsourcing to experts who can make your data meaningful. From business analysts to C-suite strategists, there is a range of experience you can bring in to help establish, maintain, and analyze your data. Starting with a couple of these resources to establish a strategic approach will allow you to make progress without the significant cost of developing a new program. You then have the flexibility to scale to ensure that you’re investing in the right tools and processes for your organization.

3. Acknowledge the Change.

Your employees have seen more change in the past two years than previous generations of healthcare workers saw in decades of their careers. Change fatigue is real, and a major contributor to workforce burnout. Establishing the why behind any new program updates is the first step in gaining employee buy-in and change adoption. Even a change in how you present information, like saying “people sent home to sleep in their own beds” instead of “patients discharged,” can remind your workforce of the purpose behind the change. Effective change management doesn’t stop with understanding the purpose. True change adoption requires communication, training, and stakeholder feedback. Implementing a holistic OCM approach will put your organization in the best position for change acceptance and adoption.

When you start planning for 2023, it may be worthwhile to build room into your budget and schedule for a data and analytics assessment. Taking the time to ensure that you’re using quality data to make your strategic decisions will save your organization time, money, and unnecessary change fatigue later.

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Not sure where to start? Connect with one of our consultants today to start the conversation about what this might look like for you.

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