Arun Joseph Varghese on July 16, 2021
In today’s health care climate, the need for data is paramount. Healthcare facilities collect a wide variety of data points. Some of these data points can provide valuable insights on how to streamline your operational and clinical processes, as well as provide the opportunity for cost-saving. In this blog post, we'll go through the operational and clinical data points you should be tracking in order to streamline your processes cost-effectively.
There are two types of healthcare data, structured and unstructured data. Structured data are formal data that includes patient names, age, blood test results, etc. Unstructured data include informal notes, emails, phone calls, social media posts, videos, and images on hospital property.
Let us look into the ways the data captured from these data points are helpful for organizing your hospital or clinical processes.
Without scheduled appointments, a healthcare facility cannot operate efficiently. The reasons for no-shows and cancellations can be tracked to identify scheduling gaps in the appointment system or problems with patient resources such as transportation services. This is useful information that helps improve your hospital's efficiency by reducing wasted time spent waiting.
This can be done for doctors, equipment, therapists, room, or nursing staff. This type of data can help to identify staffing gaps and schedule workflows more effectively and also make sure the medical and operational equipment purchased are utilized properly ensuring at the same time the requirements are fulfilled too.
This data helps the hospital to get a clear idea about the proportion of patients that take appointments prior to a visit to the walk-in patients. A good understanding of these statistics enables a hospital to better plan staffing requirements for each day so that there is no over or understaffing during peak hours. It also helps to plan strategies to encourage patients to book appointments by way of educating them about how beneficial it is for them.
Patient data from the HMS can be easily categorized into different sectors to extract different results. for example, it can be based on age to understand the category of visitors based on age, and strategies for operations can be planned accordingly to attract patients of different age categories.
It cal also be based on location, referral sources, department most visited, doctors most visited, etc. This helps not only to manage the daily operations but also for identifying the best market demographics that you can strategize on.
The wait time for a patient can be easily calculated from the HMS. It is essential because it will help you to streamline operations by making sure that there are enough doctors present at all times and also planning accordingly so that patients are not kept waiting too long or have trouble accessing care.
One of the many benefits of using HMS is that it can be used to categorize your daily revenue based on visit types, departments, doctors, even based on the procedure for example the revenue created for procedures like surgery, radiation treatment, physiotherapy, etc can be analyzed separately.
This helps you to identify what are the best performing areas of your hospital and also enables you to plan accordingly for future investments in marketing, promotional items, etc., which will help you achieve maximum returns and also to understand which area requires disinvestment.
Here the data archived helps to understand if the treatment outcomes are on expected lines.
If the average length of stay is higher than normal, then this would mean that there are a number of patients who have been admitted for prolonged periods. The healthcare provider can use these data points to figure out what has led to such high lengths of hospitalization and address them appropriately.
A healthcare provider can use this data point to understand which treatments need to be streamlined for shorter duration and more focused interventions, in order that the patient's stay is shortened but without compromising on the quality of care
This data helps to determine the utilization of hospital resources. It is important to ensure that there is a healthy bed occupancy rate in order to avoid under-utilization of beds and overcapacity, which can lead to "bed blocking".
A healthcare provider needs an understanding of both average occupancy rates and peak times for their facility before they plan new facilities or make changes.
Helps to know if there are bottlenecks, internal or external. It also helps to understand if there are any delays in the discharge process and how these delays impact other departments.
- to understand if the patient avails the prescribed items from the facility or outside. This data helps to plan for the required pricing, offers, and discounts at the pharmacy, etc.
To identify the reasons for readmission, to understand if they are satisfied with the service rendered and if not, why. This will help in addressing their concerns and also take corrective steps accordingly
Helps to understand the trend and what is trending in terms of treatment. It also helps to invest more
Helps in understanding how many people out there require your services or a new service. It also provides insights on where you need to increase marketing efforts, etc.
For example data from the HMS can help to determine the nurse-patient ratio is adequate, helps to determine the rate of incidents which is a major quality indicator
HMS helps to determine the quality of diagnostic equipment used in the hospital for example the Diagnostics Tests Re-conduction Rate, Equipment Calibration Adherence, Sample Rejection Rate all can be extracted from the hospital software and serves as good indicators for the quality and condition of the equipment.
The data generated can be used to monitor and analyze a healthcare facility’s operational processes, which in turn helps optimize clinical operations. As you may have guessed, this is where Insta HMS comes into play. Our solution provides real-time insights that allow your organization to take corrective action before problems arise — no more waiting for weeks or months of reports!