Because healthcare organizations often don’t know where to start with efforts to use analytics, many are bogged down early on.
To that end, Danyal Ibrahim, a practicing emergency physician and the chief data and analytics officer at Saint Francis Care in Connecticut, recommends beginning with the basics and keeping it simple, according to an article in HealthITAnalytics.com.
For instance, he says, identifying data silos is a good place to start. Ibrahim urges organizations to map out how their data flows, who is in charge of information at each point and how it can be brought together to provide insight into care processes.
What's more, he says, a solid analytics team will combine IT skills and clinical experience to address unique organizational problems.
“A strong analytics team will start with technical capability,” Ibrahim says. “A good team will include financial analytics, clinical skills, SQL development skill, data warehousing skills, and it also needs to have a data science component. You need the skills to conduct statistical modeling and natural language processing.”
While outsourcing has become a popular solution for organizations who don’t feel capable of tackling such tasks in-house, Ibrahim recommends a hybrid approach through strong relationships with vendors and in-house staff who can keep big data projects focused on your organization’s needs and goals.
Additionally, he says, projects need clinical staff to map out day-to-day workflows incorporating them at the point of care. While projects need executive leadership, clinical champions are the ones who can actually put such efforts into action.
To learn more:
- read the article