In the dynamic field of healthcare, the integrity, usability, and consistency of data is paramount. Yet, a January 2024 HIMSS Market Insights survey illuminates many of the challenges healthcare leaders face in managing data quality.
According to the survey, only 53% of healthcare leader respondents are satisfied with the way their organizations manage data quality, and 47% are unsatisfied. Some of the barriers to achieving optimal data quality that leaders reported include budgetary and resource constraints, difficulties in standardizing unstructured data, and over-reliance on manual workflows.
As Amol Bhalla, MD, Senior Director of Clinical Informatics at IMO Health, put it, “The amount of data [that] needs to be managed and maintained [has become] a momentous and costly task. It’s a huge undertaking, as you can imagine, which overwhelms most leaders.”
The HIMSS Market Insights survey, Exploring Ways to Improve Healthcare Data Quality Management, examines these results, revealing the top data quality management tool on most organizations’ wish lists, common data quality management challenges, and the effects of poor data quality management on care delivery, operational efficiency, and more.
Ready to assess your organization’s data quality efforts? Check out the full survey for more details.
Only have time for an excerpt? We got you. Continue reading to learn what to look for when evaluating new tech.
Look for solutions with strong data governance that support end-to-end workflows
Because of its inherent complexity, the healthcare sector faces challenges that other data-driven industries do not. Today, every organization must worry about data security, but far fewer must capture data across as many systems, comply with as many regulations, and report as much data to various regulatory bodies while under tremendous pressure to reduce costs.
“Within our healthcare environment, organizations are being scrutinized to elucidate operational efficiencies, find additional revenue streams, and monetize all the data while abiding by complex rules and regulations,” Bhalla said of the current challenges. “It is no wonder that a single solution becomes exceedingly complex to leverage and operationalize and healthcare leaders today become unsatisfied with their data management solution.”
So, what should healthcare leaders consider when evaluating solutions on the market today? First, data quality management tools that support an end-to-end workflow and encourage strong data governance practices. The key, Bhalla noted, is to take a step back and look at data governance holistically to understand how it intersects within the healthcare ecosystem.
