Healthcare Transformation: Clean Data at the Center

• Bill Brewer, Manager, Product Manager

The healthcare industry is undergoing a transformation aimed at providing higher quality, more cost-effective care. Key to striking the balance between cost and quality is data.

At GHX, we know data can help organizations set strategic direction and direct critical business and care decisions. However, this only holds true when “bad data” does not serve as the foundation for efficient and effective value analysis efforts. 

For instance, healthcare providers take advantage of their supply chain data to help reduce cost and improve standardized patient care. That data, coupled with predictive analytics, helps to better anticipate future product demand — which enables providers to avoid losing speed to patient care due to discontinued or backordered products. 

GHX CEO Bruce Johnson recently offered his insights in this HIT Leaders and News byline about clean data at the heart of healthcare’s transformation.

When dirty data (inaccurate, incomplete, or outdated information) forms the basis for strategic decisions, a host of issues arise. These issues include lack of visibility, increased risk for more errors, clinician distrust, and an inability to accurately measure results.

Hospital leaders often blame their inability to deliver accountable and informed care on inaccurate data. Adding to the substantial challenges for ensuring accuracy is the massive amount of data generated by healthcare IT systems. GHX has found:

• Bad data contributes to over two million transactional errors each month
• Corrections to hospital databases occur at a rate of 192,000 edits each month
• On average, changes are made yearly to one-third of the 30 million plus medical-surgical products on the market in the U.S. 

Driving data integrity from the ground up allows data to form the foundation of strategic, operational and IT initiatives.

It starts with hospitals and health systems:

• Establishing a master data management strategy
• Enriching item master data
• Implementing a robust content management solution
• Systematically correcting product data inaccuracies

Cleansing data and maintaining its integrity turns previously “bad data” into critical business information. Hospital leaders can use clean data to set strategic direction, feed EHRs, and support efficient and effective value analysis efforts. Accurate data provides the insight needed to improve operational performance, reduce costs, and provide better-informed, higher-quality patient care. Finally, organizations can maximize health IT investments by ensuring the accuracy and integrity of data at all times and build the foundation needed to drive transformation toward higher-quality and lower-cost healthcare.

Clean data truly is at the core to transforming the healthcare industry. 

Read more from the Healthcare Hub Expanding the Item Master

Bill Brewer

Manager, Product Manager