5 Steps to Ensure High Quality Health Data Collection Via the EHR
The EHR (electronic health record) offers a rich source of health care-focused business intelligence that has the potential to change how disease and illness are diagnosed, treated and even prevented, but EHR-generated data is not without its challenges. Ensuring that data quality is high enough for analysis to be meaningful so that it can be properly analyzed and then used is an ongoing concern. The U.S. Agency on Healthcare Research and Quality suggests a number of helpful guidelines for standardizing effective data collection, and they are identical to the questions that have been asked by good journalists and curious children since before record-keeping was anyone’s concern: who, what, when, where and how — because analysis and meaning are only as good as the data from which they draw their conclusions.
The proper utilization of business intelligence is the new frontier for health providers seeking a way to make their care more efficient and more effective. From working to gain more information about a Master’s in Business Intelligence to developing the tools that best utilize the scope of big data, no matter how they get there, tomorrow’s health care providers will generate, collect and interpret good data that best serves their patients.
Who
How and when the “Who” is asked is the first important step of gathering high-quality EHR-generated data. When patients go through initial intakes, administrators, nurses and doctors need to ask patients direct questions rather than just relying on observation. As nice as it is to develop a narrative about a patient and the treatment he or she needs, EHR data needs the structure of good, valid and definable information. Getting demographic information that can be used down the road for research and public health is a goal almost every provider can get behind. From race to age to immigration status, it’s important to find out exactly who patients are.
When
Timing is also a critical element in data gathering. The time at which a patient is admitted is by far the best occasion to get information regarding the individual’s health, concerns, pathology, habits and the like. A well-trained staff that follows EHR best practices related to the importance of timing in data-gathering will go a long way in ensuring success.
What
Standardized questions for intake and evaluation should be used in all admissions, and staff should be trained regarding the sensitivity required in gathering data like race, ethnicity and language use. Explicitly stating the reason for data gathering may help ward off resistance. Where resistance remains, a standardized approach will at least cut down on conflict and confusion.
Where
In order to accomplish some of the broader goals of the electronic health record, data should be stored so that it can be shared. Collaboration enhancement is an important program within business intelligence, and it can assist health care systems and providers in infrastructure that can ensure that data is stored in a secure fashion, while also ensuring that it is accessible, so that research, analysis and the like can move forward across disciplines.
How
One thing that cannot be forgotten at the time of admittance (i.e. the time of data collection) is that patient concerns and needs must still always come first. Whether a patient’s concerns regard privacy, payment or proper care, addressing those needs must never play second fiddle to the gathering up of data so that it can be mined, analyzed and utilized. While it’s true that the proper utilization of EHR is trying to solve the needs of a bigger picture, each individual’s administrative, personal, diagnostic and therapeutic needs remain primary.
It’s still tempting to view the advent and the implementation of the electronic health record as more hype and wide-eyed promise than reality, but as more and more health care providers change over to EHR, there is much to be gained if high-quality data is what gets gathered. Business intelligence has revolutionized how corporations across almost every industry do business, and EHR is proof that it has found its way to health care and medicine. As the logic and methods of BI are applied more and more regularly to medicine and patient care, let’s hope the revolution there is one that through first-rate data gathering yields greater health, more cost reductions and easy compliance.
About the Author: Jamie Harding is a contributing blogger who graduated with a master’s in business intelligence.
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Category: Medical
