CHIME, eHI survey reveal data analytics trends

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The College of Health Information Management Executives (CHIME) and the eHealth Initiative (eHI) have conducted a joint survey of 90 provider organizations to see how they use and analyze data. The results were shared during an Aug. 30 presentation by eHealth Initiative CEO Jennifer Covich.

More than 70 percent of organizations surveyed were actively exchanging lab results, demographic information and discharge summaries. Less than half were exchanging allergy information, problem lists, continuity of care documents, immunization orders and lab orders. Fifty-four percent of the organizations belonged to a health information exchange.

While 77 percent of organizations responded that they were using software to analyze data, 72 percent said they don’t have what they need to meet analytics requirements.

Asked what the most important uses of data were, 30 percent said clinician utilization, 21 percent said clinical excellence initiatives, 13 percent said financial management, 13 percent said operational efficiency and 7 percent said patient care delivery.

While financial management and operational efficiency ranked on the lower end of the importance scale, more organizations surveyed were using data for these purposes, along with  hospital reporting on national quality measures, than any others. Ninety-two percent responded that they were using data for financial management, 87 percent for operational efficiency and 87 percent for quality reporting.  

Asked who owned data being collected, 72 percent said that their organization did, 16 percent said their patients did, 6 percent said their providers and 7 percent said that none of those groups did or that they didn’t know.

The survey revealed that 80 percent of the organizations were inappropriately using EHR data for the commercialization of non-anonymized patient data, 71 percent for marketing of devices or drugs and 29 percent for any non-clinical use of patient data.

Challenges to using data and analytics include lack of standardization, lack of system infrastructure, cost, privacy concerns and limited utility of the results to the organization.

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