By Rose Higgins, President, North America, SCIO Health Analytics
Twitter: @SCIOanalytics
Healthcare’s mantra for 2018: Make the most of what you’ve got. The mission for healthcare organizations will be to realize a strong return on investment on technologies that are already in place.
To meet this goal, healthcare organizations will need to use data analytics more strategically than ever before. Here are 4 ways to do so:
- Expand the use of data beyond traditional clinical, claims, and financial data to harness more demographic, behavioral, and other types of data from disparate sources.
- Instead of merely using data to understand what happened in the past, leverage data to influence the current and future behaviors of patients, providers, and others more effectively.
- Shift toward an elevated view of “little data,” i.e., being more precise in the interpretation of data which enables it to be applied on an individual basis. Such analytics are highly valuable in spotting the outliers and trends that are easy to miss in a more macro-focused program.
- Seek a greater understanding of social determinants for behavior that must be gleaned from sources outside of healthcare. By using data to learn the “why” behind particular behaviors, healthcare organizations will be positioned to drive better outcomes throughout the system.
Adopting these strategies will make it possible for:
- Payers to develop detailed profiles of provider performance. They can then use this information to recognize and reward high-performing providers through programs such as “gold carding,” i.e., pre-authorizing providers for more procedures based on their history of delivering quality outcomes.
- Life sciences organizations to demonstrate the efficacy of their treatments and work more closely with payers to ensure that information reaches prescribers and members.
- Healthcare organizations to help reduce opioid abuse by matching patients/members to treatments that have proven effective in others who share similar characteristics and behaviors.
- Life sciences companies to address the high cost of pharmaceuticals by being held more accountable for proving the impact their drugs and devices have on improving outcomes for patients and populations, including sharing in the risk around those treatments. As part of this effort, they will demonstrate how they can help drive compliance and adherence.
- Healthcare organizations on the journey to value-based care can leverage precision as well as population data to tease out opportunity to drive behavior change and address healthcare waste. By doing so, healthcare organizations can keep patients/members healthier in aggregate and better control costs.
These are just a few of the results that could emanate from a more strategic use of data analytics. Can you think of any other ways data analytics can be leveraged in 2018?
Check out our latest press release “Better Use of Data, Demonstrating Value of Pharmaceuticals, Opioid Concerns Lead SCIO Health Analytics’ Predictions in 2018”.
This article was originally published on SCIO HealthAnalytics and is republished here with permission.