4 Simple Steps to Get Started with Healthcare Analytics
March 15, 2023
In this whitepaper:
- What is data analytics?
- How do you perform data analysis?
- Use cases in healthcare
Data analytics is the process of examining, interpreting and deriving meaningful insights from data to drive outcomes. It’s all about taking the information you already have, manipulating it in a way that makes sense, and making educated decisions based on the information to maximize your probability of success. Some organizations struggle with having access to data, but the amount of data available for a healthcare organization is surmountable and often times, overwhelming. Getting the most out of your data is a struggle for many organizations, but it doesn’t have to be. What seems like a daunting task can be reduced to the following simple, actionable steps to get you started with analytics:
- Collect Data
- Clean and Prepare Data
- Analyze Data
- Make decisions with Data
With a good analytics process in place, your organization can benefit from better financial performance, optimized operational efficiency and higher patient and employee satisfaction.
Collect Data
In order to perform data analysis, we have to have data to analyze. The good thing is that your organization already have data, but you have to make sure that you have access to the exact data that you want to use. Work with your IT team to get the data you need. A good starting point can be generating your chargemaster, aged trial balance, patient information, provider information and inventory list.
Clean and Prepare Data
Once you have the data, you need to clean it so that it can be digested in an analytics software. All data analytics programs like long and narrow data tables, meaning more rows and less columns.
Bad: Short and Wide
Good: Long and Narrow
You can try analyzing the data by hand, but your time and skills are too valuable to waste on something that you can let the software do. Get your data in the correct format for faster and easier analysis. You also need to check your data for any misspelling or inconsistent spelling and clean any inconsistencies in the data.
Analyze Data
This is where the fun begins. Data analysis starts with looking at historical trends, current performance and getting a good idea of the big picture. Once you have an idea of the big picture, you can apply statistical techniques and advanced algorithms to uncover patterns, correlations, and trends within the data. Through exploratory data analysis, regression analysis, clustering, or machine learning, organizations can gain valuable insights into factors influencing their operations, financial performance, and even human behavior.
Make Decisions with Data
Now that you know the pulse of your organization by analyzing the data, it’s time to make it work for you. If your data analysis doesn’t lead to action steps, you have wasted your time and resources. You need to allow the data to point towards what you need to improve and make decisions. By having a comprehensive understanding of the data and your organization, you can make tougher decisions with more confidence.
Following these simple steps can allow you to turn overwhelming and unwieldy data into your competitive advantage. Healthcare organizations will benefit from data analytics in many areas, including:
- Revenue cycle management
- Cost optimization
- Pricing analysis
- Operational efficiency and process improvement
- Provider utilization
- Scheduling and staffing
- Performance evaluations
- Strategic planning and forecasting
These data analytics use cases on the business side of healthcare demonstrate how leveraging data can drive operational efficiency, financial performance, and strategic decision-making. By harnessing the power of data analytics, healthcare organizations can unlock valuable insights that enable them to thrive in a dynamic and competitive business landscape.