Critical patient care has been backed by pushing through the Value based performance payment model along with a few other subsidiary payment models that tie into it.
But given the number of footfalls, with the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which has made it mandatory that every American needs to have insurance to avail of healthcare, medical practitioners are seeing the number of patients to be dealt with increase. With administrative tasks that leave physicians with very little time to interact with patients, how can patient satisfaction become their focus? This is where healthcare analytics can help understand how an organization is performing, in what way are the clinic results helping achieve their goals, and how patient satisfaction can be the vital factor towards a better healthcare situation. Moreover, the ACA now provides more Americans access to affordable, quality health insurance, and was introduced with the aim to reduce the growth in health care spending in the U.S. which in 2013 spent $ 3trillion, nearly 15 percent of the GDP solely on healthcare. The ACA wants to focus more on wellness and disease prevention, and this is where healthcare analytics can help understand the healthcare scenario and plug the gaps for more efficient and cost-effective treatments
Analytics is useful in predicting the trend followed in the patients historical data and can help in enhancing business performance. How to improve quality of care and simultaneously optimize on operational efficiency are the basic questions that trouble the healthcare reform practitioners. Moreover, if better connections can be drawn between diagnosis, drug discovery, healthcare providers, patients, payers, and communities, a comprehensive and smart healthcare system can be initiated. For this kind of system to be introduced, integration and aggregation of health data for analysis, querying and reporting of the results within changing demographics and prevalence of chronic diseases, is very essential to provide for patient satisfaction. So what are the ways in which healthcare analytics ensure patient satisfaction?
- Empower patients to make better healthcare decisions and about lifestyle changes based on the data gathered and analyzed – factor in how heart strokes can be prevented across all ages
- Pharmaceutical companies can help provide better drugs to combat chronic diseases and epidemics thus preventing epidemic outbreaks in time
- Medical device manufacturers can use the analytical information to provide improved devices like hearing aids, pacemakers, etc in keeping with advancement in technology and also better access for disability patients
- Analytics can help in planning for predictable/seasonal changes in disease numbers, reduce medical errors, standardize clinical care, reduce repetition of medical tests which benefit patients and communities in the long run
- It helps in better disease management and thus target prevention rather than expensive treatments in the long run
- Analysis of historical data can help in better patient management by customizing interventions to patients, ensuring high risks patient are sent to the proper care unit and monitor patients who could be at the risk of decompensation
- Analytics can also improve the bottom line for providers by ensuring better revenue cycle management, enabling effective cost control measures and improving vendor analysis. All this collectively works towards the discovery of new revenue opportunities, supply cost optimization and more efficient fraud identification
