CHIME Series: The Value of Having a Dedicated Data Analytics Team

This week, we continue to explore the results of our College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) survey and the need for data-driven teams. Our survey asked the question: With the shift to value-based care, have you considered creating a department dedicated exclusively to analytics for the enterprise? The results show that many organizations already have (32 percent) or are considering creating an analytics department (43 percent), while the remaining (25 percent) of organizations have not considered creating an exclusive data analytics team.

As healthcare continues to move towards value-based care, more organizations will need to create teams that focus exclusively on data analysis. An elite data-driven team understands that analytics is more than a data warehouse, and can help organizations make sense of data using predictive models, analysis of gaps in care, quality measure calculations and payer expertise. Breaking down these data silos will shed light on actionable insights that can be delivered to key decision-makers. Below are three best practices to ensure data teams are making an impact throughout the organization:

• Find departmental business leader and champions – data champions are the driving force that will integrate insight into their daily, monthly and/or quarterly management processes.
• Build trust with data governance – it’s important to provide reliable data that business leaders and champions can use to empower physician and clinical teams to reach their goals. To ensure data trust, there needs to be proper governance, documentation and data mapping to help build trust and transparency throughout the organization.
• Develop a data driven culture – data literacy and data democratization is the foundation for creating a data-driven culture. A key component in creating this is tapping data analysts whose sole job is to gather data and analyze it in a meaningful way to generate results. An example of this is with Presbyterian Healthcare Services (PHS), who gave their analysts the appropriate training and mentoring to ensure they were developing a consultative skillset that met the needs of their diverse organization.

With this strategy, healthcare organizations can ensure that their data-driven teams aren’t just understanding the data for their purposes but distributing it across the organization for success. To learn more about setting up a data-driven team, read more here. To get a better understanding of how PHS developed and made the best use of their data, click here. If you’re looking for guidance and assistance, make sure to contact us: https://medeanalytics.com/company/contact