Nearly 25 years after To Err is Human, medical harm remains a major challenge at hospitals and health systems across America. Today, 1 in 4 hospitalizations results in an adverse event. Compounding patient safety challenges, the U.S. healthcare industry faces widespread hospital closures, bankruptcies and rising medical costs, forcing health systems to do more with less while maintaining the provision of quality care. These organizations are in dire need of solutions that can drive both improved clinical outcomes and greater financial efficiencies.
To tackle these two problems in tandem, we need to examine a central cause affecting patient outcomes and financial inefficiencies: siloed healthcare software and data.
Data Overload Inhibits Clinical and Financial Outcomes
Data overload and siloed information is a systemic problem that contributes significantly to both patient safety incidents and margin erosion. Today, the healthcare industry generates 30% of the world’s data, and the amount of healthcare data doubles every three years. Health systems must comply with thousands of policies and guidelines to operate, and with an ever-growing patient population, healthcare data has exploded to unmanageable levels. This wealth of information is a gateway to enhancing quality care and patient safety, but 97% of healthcare data goes unused due to disconnected operations.
In addition to masking the underlying drivers of medical harm, disconnected operations and siloed data add to healthcare workers’ administrative burden. This, in turn, increases burnout, inhibiting their ability to provide the best possible care. A 2022 survey of 3,000 practicing nurses and doctors found that 69% were overwhelmed by the volume of patient data.
To address preventable harm and improve their bottom line, healthcare organizations need to transform their wealth of data into valuable insights that enable safer, better-informed decisions. This is the basis of connected healthcare operations.
The Impact of Connected Healthcare Operations on Patient Safety
Connected healthcare operations involves the harnessing of actionable data and insightful analytics to break down silos and improve safety, accuracy and efficiency across the continuum of care. Leveraging data from across the health system to extract key learnings can help to identify the factors that may have contributed to the safety incident, enabling the health system to pinpoint risk factors and take proactive steps to prevent similar events.
Take incident reporting, for example—one important piece of the overall system. Imagine two health systems that experience the same safety incident—a patient is given the wrong dose of their medication. A worker with Health System A fills out an event report, issues a warning to the nurse who administered the medication and moves on from the incident. A worker with Health System B also fills out an event report, but goes further to analyze data from across the organization from the time surrounding the incident. How long had the nurse who administered the medication been on the clock? Did the team follow all the correct protocols for administering a medication?
By connecting disparate systems, hospitals and health systems can understand the complete picture, reducing variability and risk and ensuring that every healthcare interaction is as safe and efficient as possible.
The Financial Impact of Connected Healthcare Operations
Improving healthcare safety and efficiency through connected healthcare operations is key to improving the bottom line. Patient safety incidents come with high financial costs—from lawsuits and internal investigations to reputation damage and potential patient attrition.
Connected healthcare operations enable health systems to reduce the direct costs of patient safety incidents while improving workforce efficiency. Liberating data and connecting disparate software can reduce duplicative work, freeing up more time for staff and alleviating burnout. Visibility into enterprisewide data insights enables hospital leadership and care teams to make better decisions to improve care delivery, patient outcomes and workforce efficiency, ultimately ensuring financial stability for exceptional community care.
Implementing healthcare technology shouldn’t be a trade-off between care quality, patient satisfaction, workforce administrative burden and financial return. By connecting software and data across health systems, we can raise the standard of healthcare for all, driving safer patient care, improved financial and operational performance, and a happier and more productive workforce.
Jeff Surges is CEO, RLDatix. Kemberly Blackledge, DSc, FACHE, is chief revenue officer, Nashville General Hospital.
A Premier Corporate Partner of ACHE, RLDatix is on a mission to improve healthcare by enabling a world where patients receive the best and safest care possible. For more information, visit ache.org/RLDatix.