The phrase “healthcare data” either strikes fear and loathing, or provides understanding and resolve in the minds of administration, clinicians, and nurses everywhere. Which emotion it brings out depends on how the data will be used. Data employed as a weapon for purposes of accountability generates fear. Data used as a teaching instrument for learning inspires trust and confidence.
Not all data for accountability is bad. Data used for prescriptive analytics within a security framework, for example, is necessary to reduce or eliminate fraud and abuse. And data for improvement isn’t without its own faults, such as the tendency to perfect it to the point of inefficiency. But the general culture of collecting data to hold people accountable is counterproductive, while collecting data for learning leads to continuous improvement.
This isn’t a matter of eliminating what some may consider to be bad metrics. It’s a matter of shifting the focus away from using metrics for accountability and toward using them for learning so your hospital can start to collect data for improving healthcare.Continue reading…
The healthcare transformation from fee for service to fee for outcomes just got an adrenaline shot in the arm April 27th when the Department of Health and Human Services surprised many in the market by announcing a Quality Payment Program, a proposed set of new rules to take effect in 2019.
What does the 
The term “Big Data” emerged from Silicon Valley in 2003 to describe the unprecedented volume and velocity of data that was being collected and analyzed by Yahoo, Google, eBay, and others. They had reached an affordability, scalability and performance ceiling with traditional relational database technology that required the development of a new solution, not being met by the relational data base vendors.
