News Feature | June 3, 2015

Healthcare Organizations Are Grossly Underutilizing Data Analytics

By Megan Williams, contributing writer

Healthcare Organizations Are Grossly Underutilizing Data Analytics

Vendors offering data analytics solutions should pay attention to the gap between the current use of data analytics and the potential that the innovation holds for healthcare organizations.

The Current Reality

On one side of that gap stands an industry that is enthusiastic about analytics and ready to throw resources behind that enthusiasm.

According to a recent report from CDW, more than two-thirds of decision makers in the industry rank analytics as being one of their organization’s top three priorities. This ranking of importance is heavily influenced by the rising cost of healthcare, the advent of Medicare and Medicaid EHR incentive programs, and the rise of accountable care in the industry.

Of the organizations surveyed, 67 percent said that they were planning for or implementing an analytics solution.

Missed Opportunities

A separate study from KPMG reveals an industry that, while energetic, falls far short of mature use of those same solutions. According to the study, only 10 percent are using analytics to their full potential.

That fact came from discussing analytics with 270 healthcare professionals and asking them where their organization fell on a business and data analytics roadmap. A full 21 percent indicated that they were still in the planning stages, 16 percent said they were using data in strategic decision making, 28 percent were using data warehouses to track KPIs (key performance indicators), and 24 percent were using data marts.

The survey also covered the benefits that respondents were actually seeing from analytics. It lays out the balances as follows:

  • business intelligence (BI) (34 percent)
  • improving clinical outcomes (27 percent)
  • lowering costs (24 percent)

The survey also covered the perceived benefits by organizational type, which are as follows:

  • life sciences-BI (56 percent)
  • health plans: lowering costs (35 percent)
  • providers: improved clinical outcomes (32 percent) and BI (29 percent)

Respondents also indicated barriers in the form of silos (37 percent), lack of tech infrastructure (17 percent), and data and analytics skill gaps (15 percent).

The Solution

Bharat Rao, Ph.D., KPMG LLP’s national leader for healthcare and life sciences data analytics addressed what needs to be done for any organization to move forward with analytics, “Many organizations are not where they need to be in leveraging this technology. Health care organizations need to employ new approaches to examining healthcare data to uncover patterns about cost and quality, which includes safety, to make better informed decisions.”