Performance Analytics tools are broadly used by large healthcare systems that serve thousands of patients in their hospitals each year and have hundreds of thousands of annual visits to their medical centers. They report not only improvements in the revenue but also achievements in healthcare delivery, like timely treated cases of life-threatening conditions or increased numbers of proactive procedures and operations in targeted populations. What strategies do these health systems implement to tackle sustainable results?
When health systems rely on strategies that advance care pathways, they are rewarded with contribution margin improvement, surpassing the market share aims earlier than planned, and with tens of millions of dollars in revenue.
However, organizations often lack relevant tools to define and improve targeted areas, especially when it comes to involving physicians in workflow redesign for better cost control.
Using data analytics and some key organizational measures helps address such issues and achieve business goals faster.
Challenges with Performance Analytics
Organizations must enhance quality outcomes, and keep providers engaged to strengthen their financial strategy. Healthcare systems have to deal with the following issues to achieve their goals:
- Outdated budgeting strategies focusing on labor costs and supplies, not on physicians' involvement in workflow redesign for better cost management
- Poor care coordination in certain areas of care, which significantly influences general outcomes
- Lack of data and relevant analytics software to find specific ways to increase revenue and act purposely.
Features of Healthcare Performance Analytics Software
To drive informed decisions, healthcare systems leverage data operating platforms with a suite of analytics applications like Performance Analytics tools for both margin analysis and operations management. Here are the tasks the software helps deal with:
- Tracking all areas of operational performance, such as clinic availability and wait times for the next appointment, ambulatory volume, labor-management costs
- Visualizing detailed financial, operational, and clinical performance data easily
- Determining the type of structural margin per encounter that has the greatest potential for improvement
- Displaying the percent of time each facility is used during business hours, after hours, and occupying by hours
- Identifying opportunities to improve, for example, redesigning the operating rooms and labs block times
- Redesigning case scheduling and operating room services for targeted medical procedures or surgeries, for instance, structural heart cases
- Addressing gaps in care by identifying patients with targeted health problems who have not yet received appropriate referrals and clinical care
- Changing work processes to lower the cost of care in the inpatient departments
- Standardizing department supplies and costs.
Organizational Measures While Implementing Performance Analytics
It is recommended that healthcare systems adhere to the following initiatives:
- Doctors should be trained on how to use analytics tools and data platforms, which enable them to independently review data and make data-informed decisions
- Organizations should engage active doctors in governance and the board of directors. Physicians can suggest better financial resource distribution
- Physicians should agree to the organization’s commitment, pledging to reach top-tier clinical results, build strong work relationships, and promote the workplace culture
- Organizational goals and provider incentives need to be in sync, with both doctors and administrators working toward the same objectives
- Goals should be passed down from each department to the different specialties and individual doctors, with the entire team focused on reaching the organization’s top priority aims
- It would be worth creating centers of excellence to provide patients with the best resources, ensuring care is coordinated across various care units and settings
- Centers of excellence should be responsible for developing new programs and conducting research
- Each center of excellence should have a strategic approach and be in charge of operational strategies, performance standards, and statements of profit and loss
- The business and administrative leaders should educate doctors and other partners on business subjects they may not have encountered before
- Doctors and other clinicians should teach business and administrative partners about workflow, clinical decision-making, and the patients' needs
- It is worthwhile for doctors participating in peer-to-peer development programs to share expertise.
What Benefits Can Practices Expect from Using Performance Analytics
Through aligning organizational efforts and implementing data analytics software, healthcare systems improve their clinical outcomes, operations, and economic performance. The reported results include:
- Earning tens of millions of dollars in revenue and reaching a market share target earlier than planned
- Increasing the total market share in targeted submarkets
- Becoming a leader in the target care area in a target region, for example, in vascular services in California
- Significant growth in the number of completed medical procedures, such as cath lab cases
- Considerable relative increase of operating room volumes across specific surgical areas, for example, cardiothoracic and vascular cases
- Handling increased volumes of medical emergencies without compromising care quality and the significant reduction in door-to-balloon time
- Significant increase in the number of patients receiving treatment for serious diseases that require the use of modern medical devices
- A multiple times increase in the number of active suppliers
- Improving staff involvement ratings in both inpatient departments and medical procedures areas.
How Belitsoft Can Help
Belitsoft is a full-cycle software development and analytics consulting company that specializes in healthcare software development. We help top healthcare data analytics companies build robust data analytics platforms.
For integrated data platforms developed to collect, store, process, and analyze large volumes of data from various sources (Electronic Medical Records, clinic management systems, laboratory systems, financial systems, etc.), we:
- Automate data processing workflows (cleansing, standardization, and normalization).
- Configure scalable data warehouses.
- Create dashboards, reports, and data visualizations.
- Ensure a high level of data security and compliance with healthcare regulations such as HIPAA.
- Integrate machine learning and AI into analytics.
We also help build specialized analytical applications like the Performance Analytics tool for:
- Integrating and normalizing data from multiple systems to deliver actionable insights on a single platform
- Filtering data by location, date, service type, facility
- Displaying room capacity during business hours and after hours
- Visualizing room utilization by hour of the day
If you're looking for expertise in data analytics, data integration, data infrastructure, data platforms, HL7 interfaces, workflow engineering, and development within cloud (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud), hybrid, or on-premises environments, we are ready to serve your needs. Contact us today to discuss your project requirements.
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