The healthcare industry is one of the biggest beneficiaries of advances in data analytics. If you run a healthcare business or work in the business intelligence department of medical practice, you probably know that improving data capture and analysis can significantly benefit outcomes and streamline your business operations. Before you get into advanced applications, though, here are four ways you can use data analysis to bolster some fundamentals of success.
Improve the patient experience
As a business expands, most employees tend to lose sight of the big picture as they become increasingly specialized and focused on their tasks. That’s fine, as long as your management retains an accurate overview of everything – and that includes the patient’s journey.
It’s essential to collect data along the different stages of the customer experience with your healthcare business. With the right survey software tools, you can integrate feedback capture at various steps, from online appointment scheduling to discharge and follow-up visits.
Encode more data
The potential of healthcare data to improve process efficiency and cut down on costs will largely depend on having the right sort of data at your disposal. Be aware that while traditional data entry methods can efficiently encode useful information such as patient history and location, you’ll be missing the important context in many cases.
Images and scans can require more advanced methods or systems integration but are vital to understanding individual cases. Progress notes may also fail to be included in data entry, which wastes time on the patient’s succeeding visits. Before moving on to advanced analysis, make sure that your foundations of data capture are both comprehensive and consistent.
Increase security
Having a patient’s medical information at their fingertips is a tremendous aid to improve a doctor’s judgment, both in diagnosis and coming up with the best treatment plan. It speeds up handling times, allowing your team to help bring better outcomes to more patients.
But the sharing of medical records must be carried out under strict security and compliance standards. It’s crucial to protect your patients’ health information with cybersecurity measures and best practices among your employees. This will also avoid non-compliance penalties and help you partake in secure information exchange among healthcare organizations.
Attract and retain top talent
Although patient information is essential to the success of your healthcare business, one area which could use more data mining is the experience of your employees. In any industry, the ability to draw in talented employees and minimize their loss through turnover is one key to having a competitive edge.
Many people seek employment in healthcare because of the fulfilling nature of the work; caring for others gives meaning to even the most mundane jobs in the industry. However, these people all have different needs, as well. Looking for a stable work environment with positive interactions among co-workers, or an opportunity for continued learning and professional growth, are all things that can motivate your employees – and drive them to seek other employers. Make sure your employees are heard and their voices captured into actionable data for your business to improve.
Every year, we hear more about the different ways in which technology and data analysis will help improve medical treatment outcomes and the healthcare industry as a whole. Make sure you take small but measured steps to have good fundamentals in data capture and analysis, and you’ll be ready to take advantage of innovations as they come.