Contributed by Rick Ingraham
The healthcare industry has reached a watershed moment in which payers and providers are truly beginning to invest in the development of information technology initiatives for sharing health data to improve quality, safety, outcomes and costs. And for the first time, it seems, the desire for meaningful change is aligned with cost-effective and robust enabling information technologies.
However, an alarmingly high proportion of these IT initiatives will fail. Most of the failures won’t result from a lack of merit, urgency or need. Almost every failure of an initiative will be traced back to a lack of perceived value by the primary stakeholders.
For example, take regional health information organizations. One of the first RHIOs formed has already closed. The closure was not because the vision was not worthy of the effort but, in part, because the key participating stakeholders began to question whether there was any “value-add” in participating.
So what’s the magic formula required to keep the stakeholders in healthcare information technology initiatives actively involved and fundamentally committed? The answer is really not so magical or mysterious – each stakeholder must understand the goals of the initiative and derive benefit from it.
One of the greatest challenges is recognizing that projects must be targeted to provide value to multiple stakeholders with multiple needs. In the case of a provider, insight into departmental projected safety trends or projected readmissions would be considered valuable. In the case of a health plan, member adherence projections based on a specific benefit coverage allowance or a regional care area would be considered valuable. In any event, the insight must be delivered quickly and in a manner that can be interpreted easily.
At Carolinas Medical Center, the Carolinas HealthCare System’s 795-bed flagship hospital in Charlotte, N.C., database administrators are responsible for improving the existing data processes by making them faster and easier to use and by proving the value of data-driven healthcare to physicians and administrators along the way.
This may seem like a daunting task, but the administrators have successfully employed business intelligence technology to deliver value-added benefits to the various stakeholders they support. For example, nursing staff activity levels have been automated to provide nursing supervisors with fresh information every morning, freeing them from the onerous task of collecting data by hand.
In addition, rural community leaders have been provided with data to help target preventive care and plan emergency runs with greater accuracy. Also, hospital labs now can track how long it takes for lab work to be completed and reported; administrators can instantly access patient survey results at the floor and shift levels to quickly implement changes and enhance patient care; and physicians can streamline data gathering and reporting from both a research and patient care perspective.
The University of Rochester Medical Center/Strong Memorial Hospital’s office of clinical practice evaluation employs a balanced scorecard to communicate strategy and results to employees throughout the organization. The office of clinical practice evaluation counts on fact-based business intelligence to analyze and report operational, clinical quality and financial data for the 750-bed academic medical center in Rochester, N.Y.
URMC’s scorecards are available online via a secure intranet portal and available in hard copy. One of the main reasons for the success of the scorecard initiative is the ability to display data in a meaningful way for the various stakeholders, whether they are board members, department heads or the nursing staff.
In both cases, the key to ongoing collaboration and participation among the stakeholders was the ability of the technology architecture to deliver perceived value.
Using data is fundamental to facilitating improvements in performance, accountability and collaboration, and to creating a culture of evidence-based healthcare delivery. But as Jim Goodnight, CEO of SAS, has said, “If a business intelligence solution can’t help you make sound decisions about your company’s future – quickly, easily and with confidence – it’s neither good business nor intelligent.”
Rick Ingraham is the global marketing manager for SAS’ health benefit plan industry and has served in executive positions in the insurance industry.