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Healthcare Analytics: Putting Data to Good Use

With the adoption of electronic health records, new data are becoming available that can be used to measure healthcare delivery and improve patient outcomes.

By Tom Inglesby

Clinical intelligence and the role of analytics in supporting a data-driven, constantly improving system are key aspects of healthcare. The value-driven healthcare system requires the measurement of system performance, comparison of healthcare delivery methods, and improvement in quality measurement. Many organizations are finding that data analysis and review can greatly enhance patient safety.

With the proliferation of electronic records, data sets have grown from what could be easily analyzed on a desktop computer or even a handheld device to “big data,” the collection of data sets so large and complex that they can overwhelm the IT department’s best efforts to control them. As data collections grow, however, software and data processing applications are keeping pace.

How can a hospital benefit from running in-depth analytics? According to Michelle Paret, product marketing manager at Minitab Inc., State College, Pennsylvania, “From monitoring bed falls to reducing medication errors to decreasing ER wait times, there are numerous benefits and opportunities to use data to improve the quality of care that a hospital provides. Data collection and analysis are essential for hospitals to improve their processes and increase patient safety and satisfaction.”

Paret continues, “Cathay General Hospital in Taiwan, for example, is using data analysis to save the lives of patients suffering from heart attacks caused by coronary heart disease. The tools provided in Minitab Statistical Software allowed healthcare professionals there to confidently introduce new treatment options and decrease the wait time between diagnosis and treatment, while increasing savings in medical resources.”

What benefits, specifically, can accrue to patient safety? “Many potential ‘defects’ can occur in a hospital,” Paret explains. “Patients may lack wristbands, or get the wrong ones, and medical supplies may not be available when needed. An instance of this occurred at Ohio’s Akron Children’s Hospital where sterile processing technicians couldn’t keep up with demand for clean surgical instruments.”

To solve the problem, a $3.5 million expansion was suggested. Instead, the center facilitated a Lean Six Sigma project in which the technicians redesigned their layout and processes to boost capacity and confirmed the benefits with Minitab analysis. The department now handles up to 16,000 operations annually, an increase from 13,000 procedures a year.

Medical personnel are rarely trained data analysts. In fact, most would rather not deal with non-medical functions—they take time away from the patient. System developers are well aware of this and make doing healthcare analytics easy for the non-technical person. As Paret says, “The one thing that most Minitab users have in common is that they are not formally trained as statisticians. For most of them, data analysis is just one of their many responsibilities—and not necessarily their primary job. This is why Minitab includes ‘The Assistant.’ This tool helps you choose the right analysis, interprets your results, and makes it easy to present your findings with comprehensive reports.”

Where should we look for data that can allow us to do quality analytics? “It depends on what aspect of healthcare a person is working in,” Paret says. “The possibilities are limitless. There are numbers to be counted, times to be measured, and patients to be monitored. Anywhere there is a problem that needs to be solved or a process that needs to be improved, there is data.”

Population-based analytics can be used to suggest improvements in individual patient care. Meanwhile, multidisciplinary teams are put in place to monitor opportunities to improve quality and to reduce risks and costs in acute care processes, dealing with chronic diseases, patient safety scenarios, and internal workflows.

Since it was created in 1972, Minitab has become the leading statistical software used for quality improvement worldwide. It is used in every industry that uses data analysis and statistics to make services, products, and processes better. But why is that? “People choose Minitab to analyze their data because it is very easy to use and powerful at the same time,” Paret replies. “You can simply type or import your data into Minitab and immediately begin to create graphs and analyze data with the click of a button.”

“Another benefit to using Minitab is the outstanding support that you get,” Paret adds. “For instance, technical support is provided free to all current users, so if for example, you need help creating a particular graph, all you have to do is phone us.”

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Tom Inglesby is an author based in southern California who writes frequently about medical technologies and improvement strategies.