Study: 47% of data is underutilized in healthcare decision-making

Healthcare leaders agree that data is essential to improve care quality and boost workforce productivity

BOSTON — May 7, 2024 — New research published today by Arcadia (arcadia.io), a leading data platform for healthcare, found that although four out of five healthcare leaders believe most of their data is accurate, 47% of healthcare data, on average, is underutilized when making clinical and business decisions.¹ The research highlights a pressing challenge within the healthcare industry: despite the proliferation of AI, a vast amount of data remains untapped, resulting in missed opportunities to enhance patient outcomes, improve productivity, and reduce costs.

“The research demonstrates technology’s potential to breathe new life into healthcare organizations’ underutilized data,” said Dr. Kate Behan, MD, FACP, Chief Medical Officer at Arcadia. “Data analytics platforms are necessary tools and essential enablers for healthcare organizations to turn dormant data into actionable insights that address workforce challenges, reduced revenues, and complex market dynamics.”

The study, conducted by Arcadia in partnership with the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), examines how hospitals of various types and sizes use the 137 terabytes of data they produce every day.² Key findings include:

• Data supports high-quality care: More than half of healthcare leaders view data as crucial for improving care quality, and one in four said data is necessary to power care management and patient engagement strategies.¹ 28% of healthcare leaders said data platforms enable their organizations to enhance health outcomes and patient satisfaction.¹ The findings reinforce the criticality of data to accelerate the transition to value-based care and achieve The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ goal to transition all traditional Medicare beneficiaries into a value-based care arrangement by 2030.
• Actional information improves productivity and efficiency: 95% of healthcare leaders grasp the opportunity for data and analytics to enable clinicians to improve their productivity, 30% said data platforms lead to cost savings through better resource allocation and workforce management, and 25% said they enable better decision-making.¹ Healthcare organizations navigating workforce shortages, care team burnout, and higher operating expenses can leverage data to create strategies to do more with fewer resources while still delivering quality patient care and supporting their staff.³
• AI fuels innovation: 84% of leaders have plans to integrate artificial intelligence, machine learning, or large language models with their data platform, and 55% plan to aggregate unstructured data, such as images, audio, or PDFs, to reduce time-consuming manual review and unlock insights, like an undocumented condition, to better inform care delivery. One healthcare organization used Arcadia's clinical co-pilot, Arcadia SageAI™, to reduce the time needed to prepare for a patient visit by more than 20%.⁴
• Technology makes data more useable: Healthcare leaders named enhancing data literacy (58%), using AI (47%), and addressing productivity challenges (34%) as key priorities to make data more usable.¹ Moreover, 76% of large organizations (those with 15,000+ employees) said implementing a comprehensive enterprise data solution is essential.¹ Larger organizations have the greatest need to connect disparate data sources to derive comprehensive insights and actions across the enterprise.⁵
• Accelerating data recency remains an opportunity: 61% of organizations refresh their data at least daily for business intelligence analytics, but when building and running artificial intelligence models, that number drops to 32%.¹ Only 47% of organizations leverage daily refreshed data for generating lists of care gaps and just 39% for patient stratification and building cohorts.¹ Activating data in real-time provides care teams with immediate access to the most current patient information, which ensures providers make decisions using the freshest insights.⁶

“Our findings show that healthcare leaders view data analytics platforms as critical tools to confront growing workforce shortages, financial pressures, and the shift towards value-based care,” said Michael Meucci, President and CEO of Arcadia. “Investing in a strong data analytics platform can further transform these challenges into opportunities and progress towards a more efficient and effective healthcare system.”

Download the report to discover how healthcare leaders plan to deploy a data analytics platform to power future innovations within their organizations.

¹ HIMSS Market Insights Survey, Data Analytics Platforms, 2024

² “4 ways data is improving healthcare,” World Economic Forum, 2019

³ “The use of Big Data Analytics in healthcare,” Journal of Big Data, 2022

⁴ Arcadia product performance measured in Q1 2024

⁵ “Sharing Data, Saving Lives: The Hospital Agenda for Interoperability,” American Hospital Association, 2019

⁶ “How Healthcare is Leveraging Real-World Data to Improve Outcomes,” Health IT Analytics, 2020