It’s no secret that healthcare generates a lot of data. Every single touchpoint and interaction that occurs between patients and providers is documented and stored. It seems like everyone has their hands on that data, from providers and insurers to office staff, government regulators, office managers, and the people who assess quality for outcome-based incentives.
It’s a big list.
To make things even more complicated, a significant amount of healthcare data has a short shelf life. Some things are fixed, such as the date a patient checks in, the procedure the patient undergoes, their blood type, etc.
Other things, though, are temporary. People go on and off prescriptions for various reasons. They move to new cities, change names, switch jobs, and, consequently, adopt new insurance providers. Then there’s the provider side of things. Physicians retire or move to new cities. Insurance companies merge, and so do practice groups, post-acute care facilities and hospitals.
Data changes happen frequently and often go unnoticed. These changes need to be identified immediately because they affect many things, from billing to life-and-death treatment decisions.
How to Handle Changing Data
Some healthcare data should arguably stay in-house. For example, employee and patient personal health information (PHI) should be handled either in-house or by specialized third-party companies explicitly trained to securely handle that type of data.
Other types of data require different handling. For example, data about physicians, nurses, and providers and information about clinical trials, employee recruiting, and marketing can often be best managed when it’s outsourced to a reliable third party.
It’s common for larger healthcare organizations to have multiple disconnected or incompatible data sources and systems. This can lead to a lot of disorganized data, resulting in overlooked changes that could be detrimental to the provider, payer, or patient. Smaller healthcare systems still need access to national data but don’t necessarily have the resources or capabilities required to get it or validate it.
Build Your Golden Record with HealthLink Dimensions
Whether you are part of a large or small healthcare organization, the key to effectively managing data is understanding that there’s no such thing as a golden record. Your data will never be 100 percent perfect. However, that doesn’t mean it can’t come close.
At HealthLink Dimensions, we have access to all kinds of data resources, including private, public, crowdsourced, and proprietary data records. You choose your data mix and segmentation based on your organization’s specific needs. We currently process over 100 million records a month and continue to grow.
Even more importantly, our algorithms can identify when data has changed. Our systems flag information that we know has changed, which means we can update information extremely quickly.
Additionally, we have personnel on our Provider Research Center (PRC) to make calls when data needs to be verified. Using technology and resources like these far more efficient than healthcare organizations attempting to gather, normalize, and validate provider data on their own.
If you’re ready to get as close as possible to a golden record for physician and allied provider data, we’re here to help. Contact us today to learn more about how HealthLink Dimensions can save you time and money while ensuring you have clean data for all of your organization’s needs.