The healthcare industry generates approximately 30% of the world’s data volume.
Even with abundant data, there is still a lot more to be achieved to enhance patient care and healthcare operations. For that, conventional analytics tools often can’t keep pace with real-time decision-making.
Retrospective reports and delayed insights hinder proactive care and outcomes. Physicians need something that can empower them at the point of care. And this is where health analytics tools can prove to be a game-changer.
Let’s talk about the power of health analytics tools and how they overcome the limitations of traditional solutions.
What are Healthcare Analytics Tools?
Healthcare analytics tools are software apps that help you render the full potential of healthcare data. They act as the bridge between raw information and the insights you generate from that information. This enables physicians to make improved data-driven decisions in quality, patient care, and operational efficiency to bring down the costs of care.
These tools use different techniques, including:
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- Data aggregation: Source data from electronic health records, claims data, and patient surveys.
- Data cleaning and normalization: Have accurate, consistent, and complete data.
- Data analysis: Find patterns, trends, and correlations.
- Data visualization: Present complex data in a clear, understandable manner using charts, graphs, and dashboards.
- Predictive analytics: Machine learning algorithms use historical data to predict future outcomes and identify future risks.
Limitations of Traditional Healthcare Analytics
Traditional healthcare analytics were informative but had some limitations with actionable steps physicians could take. Because of this, physicians could not utilize all the available data in a way that impacted care decisions. That’s why there was a need for better and improved healthcare analytics tools.
Here’s an overview of these limitations:
Data Overload
The volume of information the health sector generates today isn’t something most traditional systems can cope with. Most systems won’t automatically extract and process such large volumes of data that may be incomplete, biased, and inconsistent without significant lag. Additionally, clinical information is more complex. Hence, traditional systems aren’t up to the mark.
Retrospective Reporting
Conventional health analytics have been based on retrospective reporting, which generally consists of analysis done in an attempt to understand the trends and outcomes of the past using historical data. Although this will be of value to gain insights into past trends and performance and help inform future decisions, it does limit utility for real-time decision-making for current patient care.
Disparate Systems
Health data is scattered in various sources, including EHRs, billing systems, operational tools, lab data, and images. Conventional systems cannot handle the integration of data coming from different sources into a holistic view.
Lack of Actionable Insights
Even when you analyze raw data, it doesn’t always provide recommendations/insights that you can work on. Traditional analytics tools often lack data visualizations. It leaves physicians and hospitals to interpret the findings and determine the best course of action.
Reasons Why You Need Cutting-Edge Healthcare Analytics Tools
You need healthcare analytics tools that are capable of handling complex data in depth while integrating with various systems to capture the information and display all of it in one place. Let’s look at all the reasons why you need a cutting-edge healthcare analytics tool:
Enhanced Clinical Decision Making
Let’s say a physician can access a patient’s entire medical history, all the laboratory results, and even possible risk factors combined with potential treatment options and what the cost would be compared to other patients with the same diagnosis right in front of them during consultation. Real-time information based on data helps physicians and hospitals to provide personalized and evidence-based care. It helps you improve patient satisfaction and get better outcomes.
Improved Results
When physicians can identify potential complications and risks early in the patient’s journey through real-time insights, they can intervene and be proactive in treatment adjustments. This increases the efficiency of the care, which leads to better patient health and reduced cost of care for the hospital.
Operational Efficiency
Smooth integration of healthcare analytics tools with the EHR system eliminates the need for physicians to look through multiple systems or search for relevant data. It leads to an efficient workflow. On top of this, a healthcare analytics tool can highlight care variation and identify potential inefficiencies to help physicians allocate resources more effectively. It improves overall operational efficiency and reduces costs.
Population Health Management
Healthcare analytics tools can analyze care patterns and benchmark data to identify trends in patient populations. It allows physicians to develop targeted interventions and preventive measures for specific groups. The real-time insights provided can help in early detection. It enables rapid response and containment efforts to protect community health.
Value-Based Care
Data-driven insights provide a clear picture of care quality and cost-effectiveness. Physicians can use these insights to identify areas for improvement and demonstrate value to hospital leadership patients. Optimized care decisions, reduced unnecessary treatments, and minimized readmissions contribute to cost reductions. It aligns with the goals of value-based care models.
Top Healthcare Analytics Tools
Let’s have a look at top healthcare analytics solutions that provide powerful insights for better decision-making.
1. CareGauge
CareGauge is a leading clinical decision support system (CDSS) that seamlessly integrates with Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems. It provides physicians with real-time, actionable insights into care utilization and costs right at the point of care.
With a “zero-click, instant insight” approach, CareGauge empowers physicians to make informed decisions that align with both patient needs and hospital financial goals. It also provides reporting for clinical leadership to easily track and respond to trends at the hospital level.
Top Features
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- Benchmark comparison: CareGauge compares a patient’s care plan with benchmarked treatment data to offer insights into care utilization and costs.
- Seamless EHR integration: The tool seamlessly integrates with leading EHR systems to create a non-disruptive workflow for physicians.
- Actionable insights: Physicians receive instant feedback on care variations to make data-driven decisions and avoid low-value care.
- Cost transparency: CareGauge provides transparency into the cost and care utilization insights to help physicians consider both clinical efficacy and financial implications.
- Visual Cues: The platform uses green, yellow, and red to provide a view of the utilization of care. The gauges depict real-time change as orders are entered. Green is below expected utilization, yellow at expected, and red above expected.
- Measurable outcomes: CareGauge has shown a financial benefit, with significant savings per discharge and reduced length of stay.
2. Clarify Health
Clarify Health is an enterprise analytics platform that empowers healthcare organizations to make data-driven decisions and achieve value-based care goals. Its comprehensive solutions avail its large data library and AI-driven insights in simplifying operations, reducing costs, and ultimately improving patient outcomes.
Top Features
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- Atlas: A cloud-based platform for mapping of patient journeys and generating AI-powered predictions.
- Blue diamonds: This feature offers case-mix adjusted expected values for performance at both the individual patient and provider level.
- Comprehensive performance insights: Get in-depth insights on the top trends, benchmarks, and areas of improvement in various dimensions of care delivery.
- Non-public Analyses (NPAs): Get access to unique analyses based on Medicare data.
3. Health Catalyst
Health Catalyst is another important player in healthcare data and analytics technology and services. Its solutions are focused on clinical, operational, and financial transformation that enable better decision-making across the healthcare ecosystem.
Top Features
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- Health Catalyst Ignite™: The healthcare data and analytics ecosystem that will bring together best-in-class technologies, healthcare-specific data models, self-service tools, and industry expertise into one environment.
- Data ingestion and management: Accelerate onboarding data with Health Catalyst’s source template library, job scheduling capabilities, and data profiling tools.
- Unified data access and enrichment: Empower users across the organization with consistent, reliable insights through a unified data model, comprehensive terminology management, and proactive data quality rules.
- Flexible self-service analytics: Empower users to explore data, build population cohorts, and conduct analytics in a self-service manner through direct usage tools such as Pop Analyzer, with seamless integration to the tool of their choice for BI and AI modeling.
4. Alteryx
Alteryx is a self-service data analytics platform that helps users derive important insights from healthcare data. They require minimal reliance on deep technical expertise. The platform automates data preparation, blending, and analysis for faster decision-making.
Top Features
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- Codeless data preparation: Get clean data from various sources and combine them using an intuitive drag-and-drop interface.
- Self-service analytics: Empower business users to perform their own data analyses.
- Advanced analytics capability: Use predictive modeling, spatial analysis, and machine learning to gain deeper insights.
- Automation: Automate repeatable data tasks and share insights across teams to collaborate well.
- Scalability: Process high volumes of health data to meet emerging analytics needs.
Conclusion
Given the dynamism in healthcare data, the need to make informed decisions on a real time basis continuously arises. While general healthcare analytics tools provide important insights, they often fall short in providing enough depth for better decision-making.
Solutions like CareGauge focus on the future of healthcare analytics by truly empowering clinicians with actionable, real-time data at the point of care. CareGauge is an intuitive platform that:
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- Empowers proactive, personalized care
- Improves patient outcomes
- Optimizes clinical workflows
- Strengthens the hospital’s bottom line
Book a customized demo to see how CareGauge can transform your healthcare organization as you experience the power of real-time insights.
