WhiteSpace Health Blogs

Enhanced Revenue Requires Deep Analytics

Healthcare organizations solve key problems with analytics

by Gautam Char

Healthcare organizations collect a lot of data. From EHRs and practice management systems to laboratory and radiology information systems, transcribed documents and more, data can originate from many sources. And these source systems do not communicate with each other because their data sets are stored in physically separate systems.

Despite these challenges, staff are expected to use all this information to make optimal decisions that result in the best outcomes. These outcomes can be broadly characterized into three areas: clinical effectiveness, revenue lift with cost reduction, and operational efficiency.

Clinical Effectiveness

Clinical effectiveness begins with the prompt diagnosis of any condition the patient may have. Creation and execution of a care plan that resolves the issue or tightly manages chronic conditions begins once the diagnosis has been established. Adherence to scientifically proven clinical protocols helps ensure patient safety and the delivery of best results. Providers are also expected to engage patients and their families to ensure compliance optimal outcomes.

Revenue Lift with Cost Reduction

Healthcare organizations need to bill patients for their portion of financial responsibility and payers for all contractually obligated services that are provided. Once bills are ready, providers then expect to receive reimbursement in a timely manner. Anything that gets in the way of this increases cost and erodes predictability of the revenue cycle. To ensure top quartile financial performance, all workstreams in the revenue cycle must be tightly managed. Clinical outcomes must be aligned with patient outcomes, value-based reimbursements, and bonuses. Also, provider time must be optimally utilized.

Operational Efficiency

With razor thin operating margins, healthcare organizations need to carefully control expenses that are essential to rendering care. The supply chain needs to perform optimally, and human capital appropriately forecasted and scheduled. All these tasks must be completed inside the construct of compliance with numerous federal and state regulations - and possibly labor and other contracts as well. tightly managed. Clinical outcomes must be aligned with patient outcomes, value-based reimbursements, and bonuses. Also, provider time must be optimally utilized.

Leverage of Analytics is Quite Common and Often not Effective

The term “analytics” has a specific definition used by purists and it includes descriptive, diagnostic,  prescriptive, predictive methodologies. However, most organizations use the term more broadly to describe a collection of activities such as MIS (management information systems), big data, data lakes, metrics, reports, insights, and of course analytics. Most organizations invest a significant amount in home grown solutions  and primarily create a higher end reporting tool.

The WhiteSpace Health team believes that standard analytics are wholly insufficient to create the impact needed by healthcare organizations. To address this gap and fully meet the needs across the healthcare continuum, we expanded the capabilities of the analytics in our platform to support the following.

At WhiteSpace Health, we apply deep revenue cycle and healthcare operations knowledge that has been amassed by our team during their impressive careers to create a powerful and purpose-built deep analytics platform. Through the application of business intelligence (BI), AI and machine learning (ML) to your data, our platform detects, predicts, and resolves issues, and automatically prioritizes work, provides the knowledge on how to resolve the issues, and  effectively govern the improvements.

Higher Performing Organizations Go Beyond Analytics

Why are we so passionate about deep analytics? It is quite simple. We have incorporated learnings from top performers from hundreds of organizations on our platform. We have firsthand experience fine-tuning analytics programs and making them successful so our clients enjoy top quartile results. By using data to clearly identify opportunities, the pathway to improvement and the essential steps to managing sustained improvements deliver top quartile financial and operational performance.

About Gautam Char

Gautam Char is the president and CEO of WhiteSpace Health. He has a wealth of experience bringing products to market and rapidly growing companies. Known for building high performance teams that create valuable products and solutions for customers, Char’s talent for collaboration and his industry knowledge will position WhiteSpace Health for growth and excellence.  Contact: Gautam.char@whitespacehealth.com.