Healthcare Benchmark Analytics

Healthcare Benchmark Analytics tools are currently being used by large healthcare networks that serve tens of thousands of patients annually. They report enhancing the accuracy of clinical documentation and coding, unlocking activity-based costing opportunities, and better allocating resources thanks to that type of software. What strategies do these health systems implement to tackle sustainable results?

When health systems implement cutting-edge analytics instead of ineffective Benchmark Analytics tools, they can save hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

However, organizations often lack relevant Benchmark Analytics to avoid data latency for value-based care measures, making critical data-driven decisions, driving daily performance, and optimizing expenses. Using data analytics helps address such issues and achieve business goals faster.

In the context of healthcare benchmarking, the reference is made to a few different types of comparisons that can be used to drive improvement:

• Internal benchmarking (comparing with one’s own past performance): This involves tracking and comparing current performance against historical data or previous benchmarks within the organization. This method is particularly useful for organizations to assess their progress over time and identify areas for improvement based on their own past performance.
• External benchmarking (comparing with peers or industry standards): This type of benchmarking compares an organization’s performance to others in the same industry or field, such as other hospitals or healthcare systems. INTEGRIS Health, for example, used risk-adjusted benchmarks to compare its performance to similar organizations, identifying areas where it was excelling and where it needed to focus improvement efforts.
• Data anonymization for benchmarking (comparing with aggregated data from a wide range of clients): In cases where platforms aggregate data from multiple clients, they may anonymize and combine this data to generate broad, industry-wide benchmarks. This allows organizations to compare their performance against a large pool of data from various sources, potentially offering a more generalized view of performance standards. This approach is seen in platforms that work with various healthcare clients and offer “benchmarks” derived from anonymized data sets.

In the example provided, INTEGRIS Health utilizes a combination of internal data, peer comparisons, and customized cohorts to benchmark its performance. This mix of methods enables the organization to make informed decisions and target areas of improvement while also considering broader industry standards and trends.

Challenges with Performance Optimization

The organization’s senior leadership (CEO, CMO, and CNE) needs data and analytics to set the company’s course effectively. Healthcare systems have to deal with the following issues to achieve their goals:

• An organization possesses large amounts of data but often lacks the critical insights required to improve performance

• Data must be transformed into more effective decisions related to organizational priorities, resource distribution, and establishment and achievement of needed targets for performance improvement

• Data is not translated into knowledge and cutting-edge analytics is not integrated into everyday operations

• With access to more comprehensive data, it can be challenging and overwhelming to figure out the most effective way to leverage it for improvement

• The available data can make it difficult to distinguish meaningful insights from irrelevant information

• Organizations are often forced to pursue all data instead of concentrating on specific opportunity areas

• Optimal leadership decisions require not only significant data integration and transformation but also advanced analytics and a broad perspective

• An existing benchmarking tool might fail to convert data into actionable insights that can be used to enhance operations and improve outcomes

• Even a few months of data latency for value-based care metrics hinder the organization’s capacity to make timely, data-driven decisions

• Organizations lack a solution that integrates information from various systems, delivers timely data for focused improvement, and benchmarks performance against industry peers and other customized groups.

Features of Healthcare Benchmark Analytics 

To integrate data from multiple disconnected sources into a unified, centralized system and gain powerful insights into performance, healthcare systems leverage data operating platforms with a suite of analytics applications, such as Benchmark Analytics tools. Here are the tasks the software helps deal with:

• Leveraging risk-adjusted benchmarks to evaluate performance internally and against its peers, analyze opportunities, define priorities for improvement, allocate resources, and set actionable improvement goals for everyday operations

• Uncovering surprising insights into areas of performance that are better than expected and areas that require attention, such as reasons for readmissions (some may be considered a priority target for improvement, although already improved compared to peer organizations, while others may be needlessly ignored)

• Benchmarking clinicians to streamline the triage of case reviews and enable peer-to-peer comparisons. It helps identify variations, allowing the organization to target specific areas for improvement

• Determining top performers and identifying best practices through peer comparisons to distribute effective strategies across the organization and speed up improvement efforts
• Enhancing the precision and reliability of clinical documentation, coding, and performance reporting with specific, transparent, and timely data.

What Benefits Practices Get after Using Healthcare Benchmark Analytics Tools

By coordinating efforts and using robust analytics platforms, healthcare systems can get better-integrated and more comprehensive data alongside innovative analytics necessary for making key leadership decisions and enhancing daily performance. The results reported include:

• Hundreds of thousands of dollars are saved every year by discontinuing the use of ineffective third-party benchmarking tools

• The integration of advanced analytics into everyday operations enables the creation of a unified data source of truth across fragmented systems and gaining profound insights into performance

• Top leadership gets the integrated data and analytics necessary to shape the organization’s strategic direction effectively

• The organization achieves a consistent and unified vision of quality and may proactively concentrate on opportunities to improve organizational performance and outcomes instead of reacting to delayed performance data

• Data refreshes tens of times faster, and the benchmarks are significantly more precise and flexible

• Data scientists can better focus, allocate resources, and set targets

• Organizations surface more opportunities to enhance performance and outcomes by using an activity-based, manufacturing-style costing approach. It enables a robust real-time view of costs, identification of inefficiencies, and discovering opportunities for cost optimization and care delivery improvements. 

How a Healthcare Software Development Company Can Help

An outsourcing company like Belitsoft that specializes in healthcare software development assists top healthcare data analytics companies in building robust data operating systems.

For integrated data platforms developed to collect, store, process, and analyze large volumes of data from various sources (Electronic Medical Records, clinic management systems, laboratory systems, financial systems, etc.), the healthcare software development companies:

• Automate data processing workflows (cleansing, standardization, and normalization).

• Configure scalable data warehouses.

• Set up and implement analytical tools for creating dashboards, reports, and data visualizations.

• Ensure a high level of data security and compliance with healthcare regulations such as HIPAA.

• Integrate machine learning and AI into analytics.

They also help build specialized analytical applications like Healthcare Benchmark Analytics Tools to:

• Pinpointing areas where an organization excels and where it lags, enabling organizations to set priorities and focus on improvement initiatives
• Using the scoring system to evaluate the healthcare system and each of its facilities by comparing them to similar organizations and tailored cohorts
• Integrating data, analytics, and machine learning algorithms to uncover real opportunities for enhancing value-based care metrics, patient safety, and reducing mortality rates 

If you are looking for expertise in data analytics, data infrastructure, data platforms, HL7 interfaces, workflow engineering, and development within cloud (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud), hybrid, or on-premises environments, a healthcare software development company like Belitsoft also can serve these needs.