The healthcare industry relies heavily on data to provide effective patient care. However, many organizations in this sector have poor data handling practices. Most of their important patient information is scattered across many different sources, including census, clinical, reimbursement, staffing, financial, and marketing data. Due to this fragmentation, knowledge experts in these organizations can spend about 29% of their work week searching for the right data to properly perform their job. A large healthcare company has an average of 367 software tools that contain data, which can also heighten the risk of privacy breaches.
It is recommended that healthcare companies make the switch to using a data warehouse to store their data, which is a centralized repository that is easily accessible. Building a data warehouse in-house can be a huge ordeal and require a massive investment of time, money, and resources. In fact, it can take an internal team 12-36 months to build it. Outsourcing the data warehouse to a third party can be a great alternative. These warehouses come pre-built with a structure that is easy to use and already fully HIPAA compliant. Integration is also heavily streamlined, with a 90-day implementation window. A well-built data warehouse can improve patient outcomes significantly, which should be the goal of every healthcare organization.
Source: Megadata