If a health care facility’s data governance strategy is virtually nonexistent or haphazardly applied, it could result in significant and unnecessary expenses. Here are four ways that better data governance can improve the health care industry.
Data governance is the practice of overseeing content throughout its lifecycle to ensure it meets standards for quality and integrity. Health care organizations need to figure out how to manage data so the entities get value from it while keeping the information secure and following best practices for patient privacy.
Here are four ways that a focus on data governance can enhance the health care sector at large:
1. Data Governance Is a Tool for Preventing Breaches
Data breaches are increasingly common in this ultraconnected world where people give their information without thinking twice about it. However, when the headlines announce hacks, individuals become wary. Due to the extremely personal and historical nature of health data, a breach at a hospital or similar facility could be exceptionally lucrative for hackers.
No single method is guaranteed effective against breaches, but data governance is crucial for making breaches less likely to happenOpens a new window . As a start, health care organizations should perform periodic data audits. Those checks help them stay aware of the amount and kind of data they hold and how to keep it safe.
Plus, auditing the data could reveal problems that would likely lead to breaches if not fixed. Taking a preventive stance is crucial for avoiding breaches, and data governance is a vital part of such proactiveness.
2. Uniform Data Governance Standards Help Providers Focus on Patient Care
The use of electronic health records (EHR) helps streamline the care patients get, but they also make providers work with data in ways that didn’t exist in the days of paper files. In addition to staying abreast in the developments that help them treat patients, today’s health professionals also have to undergo training related to data handling.
Fortunately, excellent data governance can bring about a level of uniformity that allows people to work with the information comprising electronic records more efficiently than they may expect. This enables providers to spend more of their valuable time interacting with patients. That’s because many kinds of software used in the health care industry offer automatic checks that reduce issues like duplication, typos and forgetting to follow steps.
As such, implementing a data governance program can also enhance patient safety by holding members of the care team accountable for their actions. When the risk for health care-related hacks goes up, the people who work in risk mitigation have growing burdens that distract them from patient care priorities.
Data governance programs introduce an element of standardization that minimizes issues and allows people to put as much of their effort as possible into taking care of patients. Similarly, data governance helps health care facilities maintain regulatory compliance. Failing to do that could also reduce the attention paid to patient care.
3. Better Data Governance Can Bring Cost Savings
If a health care facility’s data governance strategy is virtually nonexistent or haphazardly applied, it could result in significant and unnecessary expenses. In one case study, a client had more than 30 separate document storage agreements across various regions. It hired a company to identify risks, make a benchmark for the program and come up with a new master service agreement (MSA).
The strategies utilized resulted in millions of dollars in cost savings, including $20,000Opens a new window recovered after one storage provider double-charged the annual rate at an inactive site. This example shows that data governance not only applies to on-site documents, but it also involves off-site and cloud options. Those providers must also fit in with overall data governance claims.
4. Improved Data Governance Makes Patient Records More Relevant and Accurate
Errors in records can cause patient deaths, unwarranted treatments and ballooning expenses for patients and facilities alike. There are known challenges related to matching the correct data to the right patient. When that doesn’t happen, the likelihood of mistakes increases. Duplicate data is one of the most significant obstacles that cause inaccuracies.
A study looked at the root causes of duplication and found that more than 58 percentOpens a new window of data mismatches were for the patient’s middle name. There were also issues for first and last names that were spelled wrong or placed in incorrect fields, such as the first name typed in a space meant for the last name.
Since management is a primary part of data governance, these kinds of errors could decrease if the health care industry emphasizes being more careful when it handles data and, specifically, when inputting details. If an organization notices one kind of mistake occuring at an abnormally high rate, that may clue managers into the need for better training.
Data Governance Is a Team EffortAlthough some people in health care specialize in data governance, every employee must participate for maximum effectiveness. Then, the benefits described above and others will become apparent. When managed correctly, patient data can guide providers by streamlining care.
However, if data governance falls short, a facility could experience problems with breaches, fines and other things that compromise operations and the facility’s reputation.