Hospitals, MedCity Influencers, Devices & Diagnostics, Health Tech

How analytics can elevate the role of data across the care continuum

With analytics, faster, more informed decision-making is possible. This provides opportunities for healthcare leaders and organizations to find greater alignment on priorities, resources and outcomes.

The digitization of healthcare has elevated the role of analytics and data in recent years.

With this movement, fully understanding and utilizing data has become an essential practice across all industries. This is a necessity for strong decision-making—and the healthcare industry is no exception. Whether a clinician is evaluating an individual patient’s needs or a change is being considered for an entire health system, high-level decisions are being made on the back of data.

With analytics, faster, more informed decision-making is possible. This provides opportunities for healthcare leaders and organizations to find greater alignment on priorities, resources and outcomes.

Using data analytics as a tool to better serve patients

At a macro level, healthcare data has become more sophisticated. It is crucial to understand how patients in the community are interacting and engaging with the right connected systems. In considering ways to best utilize data analytics to optimize patient service, it’s important to consider how the data field is evolving.

In pediatrics, specifically, there is healthy dialogue around privacy and access. In the near term, there are numerous skills to uncover in the data field. We’re learning what kinds of information are most important to delivering high-quality care—the more we refine this approach, the better we can focus on information that has the most impact.

All of this is paramount when trying to optimize the patient experience. Analytics provide insights into patient interactions with physicians in a clinic or hospital. This allows organizations to understand both the positive and negative experiences of individual patients and families to enhance care and identify areas that require additional focus or improvement.

Data is also allowing patients to engage more directly with their care. Patients are taking charge of their own health.

Using remote applications or virtual appointments via telehealth gives patients the power to dictate their needs through tracking, monitoring and uploading information. For example, in diabetes care, patients can use technologies like continuous glucose monitors that can upload data directly to a portal or EMR. This gives providers insight into which patients need additional support and where education resources can be most effective, leading to healthier outcomes.

The height of precision health is augmented decision-making

Healthcare has often relied on individual experiences and, due to its high-touch nature and intimacy, outdated methods of data management have followed. As the amount of information that flowed into organizations reached near-overwhelming levels, this needed to change quickly.

Healthcare is starting to catch up, but in 2022, we’re at a critical juncture where the aim of the game is simplicity. With simplicity comes more actionable insights. With actionable insights come improved care. This will allow the industry to deliver data-driven decision-making rather than a combination of data and experience. This is known as augmented decision-making, and it is something the industry is taking note of this year.

Although augmented decision-making is increasingly difficult at the pediatric level—since many of the pediatric and adolescent patients who require hospitalization have complex care needs—this has proven a critical element for care anywhere models. For example, throughout the pandemic, analytics enabled organizations to assess more vulnerable patient populations and evaluate the equitable distribution of Covid-19 vaccines. For organizations that leveraged these tools, it helped prioritize outreach efforts and targeted interventions to specific geographical areas and mobilize the right resources.

Setting organizational priorities

Improving patient service doesn’t just involve direct care, but also requires strong organizational direction. Analytics can be a powerful tool to assist in setting this direction and aligning priorities.

For instance, understanding patient outcomes and experience can help an organization make continuous improvements, ensuring equity amongst patient populations and highlighting the most vulnerable. This enables organizations to magnify the focus on addressing the needs of those vulnerable patients. Big data, powered by the right analytics tools, has shown the potential to better address healthcare inequities in the community.

Organizations must use these tools to better understand and evaluate the social determinants of the health for a patient population, from housing to education and other economic conditions. Additionally, improved accessibility for patients promotes more frequent data collection at the patient level.

There are several factors that go into understanding social conditions beyond just the typical things you collect in a physician visit. We must be focused on identifying these dynamics that ultimately affect the patient’s care and result in different interventions.

Moving forward

Excitingly, we’ve seen analytics elevate the value of data in healthcare. Because of this, we can now move to models that leverage data to influence critical thinking and give healthcare organizations a better understanding of trends that are impacting care.

Today, analytics has a broader set of functions across the care continuum. Healthcare entities can use analytics to remain agile, while also ensuring that operational flow, patient experiences and clinical outcomes remain aligned with organizational priorities.

By getting the data and analytics part of the equation right, organizations will find they are well-equipped to offer a continuum of care and chart a course forward to fill current or emerging care gaps.

Photo: tonefotografia, Getty Images


Avatar photo
Avatar photo

Brendan Watkins

Brendan Watkins is the Chief Analytics Officer at Stanford Children’s Health, where he leads the enterprise-wide analytics program which focuses on improving insights across the domains of clinical, operational, strategy and research. In 2019, under Brendan’s leadership, Stanford Children’s Health attained the highest Stage 7 designation from the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) for analytics maturity due to the health system’s application of analytics to advance patient care innovations and its data culture.

Prior to joining Stanford Children’s Health, Brendan spent 15 years in various analytics leadership roles at Stanford Health Care and NYU Langone Health. Brendan was one of the inaugural Lean Six Sigma Black Belts at NYU Langone Health where he was responsible for leading change in the organization’s processes and developing a Lean culture. Brendan holds a Masters of Business Administration from NYU Stern School of Business in Management of Technology and Operations.

This post appears through the MedCity Influencers program. Anyone can publish their perspective on business and innovation in healthcare on MedCity News through MedCity Influencers. Click here to find out how.

Shares1
Shares1