By Balu Nair | November 20, 2020
Original Source
Patients have signaled that they are ready for the digital revolution in healthcare, yet providers are still grappling with technology and disparate data.
As they’ve demonstrated in countless other industries, consumers are open to embracing greater use of data analytics and digital tools in healthcare, but they often need a little bit more support to get there.
For example, an Accenture survey of nearly 8,000 consumers revealed that the majority were willing to obtain virtual care from traditional healthcare providers, and more than 80% reported that they trusted hospitals and doctors to keep their healthcare information safe.
Given that consumers have long been comfortable with tech giants such as Amazon and Netflix employing advanced analytics to gain insights into current buying and watching habits to predict future behavior – and boosting consumer engagement and consumer satisfaction in the process – it’s hardly a surprise that they’d expect their healthcare providers to likewise adopt digital tools.
Similarly, providers themselves are generally enthusiastic about leveraging data to enhance the patient journey and efficiency of their practices; they just need an intuitive way of generating actionable, predictive insights from their existing data. From dominant academic health systems to small practices, most providers are already swimming in data they collect from electronic medical records (EMRs), scheduling and care coordination systems, virtual health apps and patient surveys.
Rather than more data, providers are looking for better ways to make sense of the data they already have to improve patient care, in addition to finances and operations. Advanced analytics can help physicians gain data-driven insights at the right time in the workflow to improve treatment decisions and patient experience, as well as clinical and financial outcomes. (With that said, it should be acknowledged that providers experience several substantial barriers to adopting advanced analytics and patient engagement technologies that should not be overlooked or minimized, such as limited funding, lack of reimbursement from payors and other technical challenges.)
Nonetheless, here are several instances along the typical patient journey where both large and small provider groups can use advanced analytics to deliver more patient-centered care.
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