Analytics

When Healthcare Finance last year asked experts to name the top industry trends, they selected insurance exchanges, mergers and acquisitions, new payment models, and technology. Things don't look much different in 2015.

Between online marketplaces for Social Security numbers and data hijackings at Sony and critical access hospitals, catching and preventing fraud has never been more important or dependent on technology.

A major limitation of current supply chains is that they are not tied to outcomes. Most hospitals and health systems still lack a key ingredient that could turn their supply chain operations into powerful tools for better care.

An increasing number of healthcare organizations are turning to demand forecasting, crunching numbers to help them determine potential device usage, patient demand and even to decide whether or not to build new facilities.

The most successful hospital supply chain leaders are changing the usual conversations with clinical and administrative leaders into more meaningful collaboration by offering new, actionable insights through the use of business analytics.

Linda Burt, vice president and chief financial officer at Nebraska Methodist Health System in Omaha, Neb., sat down with Healthcare Finance News to discuss the primary ways in which hospital CFOs use analytics, and how data -- if assessed properly -- can reduce risk.

Healthcare organizations are creating mountains of data and to tap that data's full potential, they need data analysts.