The top priorities for health information technology (HIT) executives in the next two years are not only closely tied to governmental mandates. Managing the exponential propagation of data, which could cause unexpected security problems, is also keeping HIT executives up at night.
According to the 2014 HIMSS Analytics report, "The Perfect Storm: Navigating the Health IT Archiving and Data Management Challenge," released today, HIT execs must manage a sea of data while also working to acheive government mandates.
For the survey, HIMSS Analytics conducted a web‐based survey of HIT executives from randomly‐selected U.S. hospitals. They got 150 responses; more than half were CIOs.
Among the findings:
- ICD-10 will increase an organization's data volume when diagnosis codes jump from 14,000 to 68,000
- Stage 2 of Meaningful Use, with its focus on patient portals, will add layers to Meaningful Use Stage 1 data-sharing requirements
- As more organizations enchance electronic health record capabilities, there will be a rise in electronic clinical data collected and stored
For data storage, close to 70 percent surveyed answered that clinical, lab and operational data were accessed six months after capture. Almost half of respondents reported that six percent or more of their annual IT budget is spent on data storage.
For data backup, nearly half reported using multiple approaches.
When asked if their organization experienced disaster recovery or data loss in the past five years, 21 percent said they have; 69 percent had not.
"The need to develop a succesful strategy to manage data is essential," the report concludes. "An increasing number of healthcare organizations are using analytics from current data and archived data to project the needs of their patients and streamline their organizational business performance."
To learn more:
- read the full report
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