The first step: Understanding the scope of opportunities
When healthcare leaders collectively agree on the importance of quality data, the first step is to understand the size and scale of the opportunities ahead. Andrew Sorenson emphasizes the need to assess the investments required and the potential outcomes they can yield. This understanding lays the foundation for effectively capturing data and analytics opportunities.
According to Sorenson, “I think one thing that’s really important is to try and figure out the size and scale of opportunities that you have in front of you as a company. Once you realize and have a sense for the investments that you need to make and the outcome of what those investments may yield, it’ll help you understand how much you can invest in order to capture those data and analytics opportunities.”
Michael Meucci adds that organizations should avoid “boiling the ocean” and instead focus on a specific domain to start. By starting small and expanding gradually, healthcare organizations can tackle their data problems more effectively. Defining what constitutes quality data is also crucial, as it helps address the common concern of data accuracy.
Meucci states, “Data in healthcare is imperfect, and as part of the change management process to get individuals using data, being able to define ‘quality data means this’ is an important question because I’ve seen organizations and I’ve lived these experiences where the question of, ‘Is this data right? Is it accurate? Is it high quality?’ becomes the hill that everyone dies on when the majority of the data is fine to use and you’re chasing down the edge case.”