Siva Prasanna
Hospitals need to provide the best treatment for their patients with low cost. It is tough to maintain the balance between cost and quality. Data Analytics helps to reduce the cost of patient care which helps to provide more personalized services. According to the KPMG survey, it was estimated that only 10% of health care professionals are using data analytics which includes both analytics and predictive capabilities.
Hospitals provide a lot of data which can be analyzed using analytics tools and business intelligence(BI). Rather than focusing on the facts, hospitals and health care systems are more benefited from health care analytics.
7 effective ways to cut down the cost in hospitals:
1. Cut down of administrative cost:
One-fourth of the healthcare expenses are for the administrative cost this is because of the manpower required. Administrative cost can be decreased with electronic medical records, healthcare encounter into cashflow can be significantly enhanced with automated coding.
2.Clinical Decision Support:
The decision-making process by clinicians can be improved by bringing lab reports, medical tests and prescribed medications on one electronic board. This will helps to reduce the cost at the same time. With the help of one electronic board, clinicians get a clear picture of what needs to be done for a patient and what has been already done. This will avoid the double-prescriptions of medicines due to lack of information.
3.Cutting down fraud and abuse:
A significant amount of money is lost in fraud and abuse every year. Organisations have to use analytics to have an insight into patient information and get a knowledge of what physicians are prescribing. Analytics not only helps to track incorrect payments and fraudulent but also to know about the history of an individual patient. It’s not just about the analytical tool but the correct usage of it will give you the correct answers.
4.For better care coordination:
In the next 10 years, healthcare analytics is extremely helpful for hospital systems. It can be very disconnected even within the same hospital systems. Analytics helps with patient handoff which not only helpful within the system but also across all the healthcare organisations across the country. Many different specialization organizations do not communicate with each other about a patient, and I think we can really work to have all the records that can be reached throughout the country.
5.Improved patient wellness:
With the help of Analytics, healthcare organisations will help to remind patients to keep a healthy lifestyle. This will also help to keep track of patients lifestyle choices. The information needed for the patient to modify his/her lifestyle will be provided with the help of Analytics. This makes the patient feel their health as a top priority with continuous reminders.
6.Reducing emergency room visits:
It was estimated that every year 1.3 million unnecessary trips are made for emergency rooms and hospitals. This is costing medical facilities around 2$ billion which represents two out of three ER patients. Appropriate preventive care will reduce health care costs and overall hospital care because early care can reduce the severity of the disease.
Better use of analytical tools helps to produce better results:
1.Optimize Block Scheduling:
In order to identify the inefficiencies and revenue losses, health care analytical team uses BI tools which are used to drill out the patterns. For example, the operation room area is suffering inefficiency and the problem in this area can be rectified through analytics. Whereas an empty room is a source of waste which doesn’t need any kind of analytics. The data is to be collected and analyzed with the help of data analytics. Combining the operation room information and providing with automated access to usage will make a huge difference.
2.Scrutinizing the supply chain:
To identify supplier performance and invoice billing data, health care providers can drill into invoice billing data and procurement with the help of analytics tools and BI. Supplier performance can be analyzed with the help of pricing, quality, quantity and timeliness. As profit margins are increasing, hospitals have to be very keen operationally. Safety and patient care are to optimize, unnecessary and wasteful spending are to be eliminated which helps to reduce the cost and making operations efficient and lean.
3.Maximize the machines:
Essential hardware can be monitored to detect the breakdowns using BI and analytical tools. This can be done by optimizing service and operations and ensuring work to be performed at the right time, monitoring and analyzing equipment data, sensing remotely operational data from the equipment. Boosting patient safety, maintenance and repair cost are to be reduced and thereby revenue cost for equipment failure and downtime is to got down.
The efficient and most effective way to save money is to reduce the wastage of small resources. This may not be possible individually and hence, it should be done with the help of BI and data analytics. Not only organizations are improving with this savings, but a lot of patients are also benefited with high-level of care of treatment.
