09/21/2022
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.
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.
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.
