Hospitals are inundated with more patient data than ever thanks to the growth in required reporting for government agencies and tracking of quality indicators. Though the deluge of data can be overwhelming, it can also serve as a vital tool for driving the improvements to patient care, safety and experience that hospitals must make to reap the financial incentives of value-based care.

Fortunately, a new set of technologies, known as the Real-time Health System, is emerging to help hospitals gather and interpret data collected at the point of care, providing insights that can enhance clinical efficiency, patient outcomes and operational excellence. Hospitals can use these point-of-care insights to deliver more timely, personalized care to patients, improve communication between patients, nurses and care team members, and address staffing shortages, workflow or performance issues.

Gathering patient data at the bedside or wherever care is being administered is easier than ever with today’s technology platforms, but translating this data into meaningful information and providing those insights to the right caregivers at the right time is more challenging. For effective analytics that can drive operational excellence, hospitals should ensure that data has the following characteristics.

• Actionable. Data is only worthwhile if clinicians and hospital leaders are able to act upon it. With the proper analytics tools, hospitals can not only track adverse events, but also look at the risk factors that may cause or contribute to them, as this article in Becker’s Hospital Review describes. For example, data gathered at the bedside can reveal why certain patients are more susceptible to falls and identify behavioral or process changes staff can initiate to help prevent them.
• Timely. In most hospitals, there is a lag between when data is gathered and when it is processed. This delay usually results in outdated information that is difficult to link to outcomes. Real-time insights allow hospital leaders to monitor activities more closely and evaluate whether they are achieving the desired results.
• Accessible. According to a 2016 survey by Quest Diagnostics and Inovalon, clinicians are eager to take advantage of data that could help them personalize care and deliver better outcomes. But 65 percent of those surveyed said they do not have enough access to patient data within their existing workflow, and 85 percent are actively searching for tools that deliver actionable insights while they are sitting with patients.
• Collaborative. To set reasonable goals for improving operations across departments, hospital leaders need realistic and meaningful benchmarks, as this article in Fierce Healthcare emphasizes. Insights that can be shared with decision-makers throughout the hospital provides everyone with a bigger picture view of areas that need improvement or opportunities for growth. Collaborative data can motivate discussions about best practices and boost awareness and accountability across the entire organization.

How Amplion Can Help

We provide hospitals with our Care Assurance platform that collects thousands of data points at the beside as care is being delivered to patients. This real-time data flows into an integrated reporting and analytics portal that produces colorful, visualized reports available anytime and anywhere. Our powerful data analytics platform, Amplion Care Insight, is designed to provide leaders with unprecedented views of what’s happening in their hospitals in real time and point-of-care insights that drive clinical, financial and operational improvements.

If you want to learn how Amplion can help you improve operational excellence, click here to contact one of our technical specialists.