Data Analytics in Healthcare: 5 Reasons Why You Do It

As previously mentioned, before you start building a database you need to know what problems you’re trying to solve. Assuming you have done this, you still may not be convinced of the value of investing in data analytics.

Here are some practical reasons why you should do physician data analytics:

1. Improve communication
An excellent use of data analytics is to establish follow-up procedures related to chronic conditions. The analytics tool can review your patients in the data base and automatically alert your staff when a preventive or diagnostic test should be done. As a physician, you do not have to “remember” to do this, your staff does not have to “remember” to do this, and your patients do not have to “remember.” The data analytics system is the engine behind “intelligent” reminders for patient care!

2. Lower the overall costs
In spite of your staff’s ability, without data analytics you do not actually know the costs of routine functions. Do you know how much it costs to contact a patient or do an H&P? Data analytics can take the same patient and reveal resources utilized, office time and staff time. You may discover physicians see the same patients with less time and expense. By knowing variations, your team can sit down and examine differences between a high performing physician/staff member and others. The key is to use data analytics to set work flows, goals and procedures for your staff. Over time, this improves operations and lowers the overall cost of your practice.

3. Improve volume of patients seen
A benefit of examining the “times” associated with patient flow and staff in your practice is you can plan how to remove roadblocks increasing the “in-out” time. By lowering the time per patient, you free up exam room space and allow for more patients to be scheduled. You’ve just increased the revenue of the practice!

4. Improve patient satisfaction
The most common complaint of patients is they wait too long to see a physician. By using data analytics to examine and manage work flow, you can target specific areas to reduce wait times. This automatically leads to greater patient satisfaction.

5. Improve quality of patient care
When a patient comes to your office with Internet printouts, many of the articles are irrelevant to the patient. With data analytics, you could say “based on the clinical evidence from best practices and similar cases, the better procedure is A instead of B,” and then show them the analytics-based data. Not only will you improve the quality of patient care, but the satisfaction of the patient will dramatically increase – a “double benefit” from using a clinical data analytics tool!