5 Key Insights about Healthcare Data

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Complete and accurate healthcare data can lead to improved diagnoses and treatment. Unfortunately, nearly 80% of healthcare data remains locked in unstructured format, providing little to no value. Kyle Silvestro, CEO of SyTrue and recognized thought leader in data-driven healthcare, discussed significant insights about healthcare data.
 

  1. Healthcare Data Will Only Get More Complex: Data is inconsistent, high volume, and variable in an ever-changing regulatory environment. With the complex nature of medicine and fragmented data storage today, medical records are left incomplete and inaccurate. Therefore, patients must demand access to their health data and empower themselves to improve their health.
  2. Data Errors Make Useful Insights nearly Impossible: At the point of care, error rates of ICD codes can range anywhere from 20-50%. The inaccuracies may come from the physician or provider, from patient behavior, or the record trail itself. Using that data to generate valuable insights is almost impossible with such varied accuracy.
  3. Fails to Reach Full Potential due to the “Human Problem”: Each year, “physicians create approximately 2 billion clinical notes and reports each year, (some of them even legible).” That’s 95 new notes every second and organizations don’t have a workforce to extract, normalize, and validate the vast amounts of data into real-time analytics at the point-of-care. Outdated technology also threatens to erode the clinical value of the information itself and as reports are overlooked, patients won’t get the timely care they deserve.
  4. Critical Findings are Still Not Reported in a Timely Manner: The National Patient Safety Goals program requires the timely reporting of critical results since time is of the essence when treating cancers and other illnesses. Many organizations however still do not have automated notification systems for relaying critical findings. Any delay can cause long-term effects that could have been easily avoided if a system was in place to automatically notify patients of results.
  5. Healthcare Data Can Improve Workflow: Many physicians are frustrated by the time consuming task of data entry into mandatory EMRs while still trying to give patients their full attention. New technology is being developed to alleviate these issues and improve workflow. With the correct tools in place, physicians can stop being data entry clerks and go back to caring for their patients while still complying with Meaningful Use requirements.

 
Finding technology that is interoperable with other existing systems is a major hurdle, but health IT has come a long way in its ability to translate unstructured medical data into smart clinical information at the point-of-care. Better technology will increase accuracy in diagnoses, improve workflow efficiences and drive more comprehensive insights for research. 

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