Big data helps hospitals lower readmissions

Posted on Monday October 03, 2016

For hospitals, readmission rates are a key performance indicator (KPI). They indicate the quality of care your practice provides and what sort of resources you need in reserve to avoid overcrowding. Some legislation even reduces government payouts to hospitals with high readmission rates. Regardless of whether you want to avoid a stiff penalty or just improve your patient services, data analytics may be the solution, and we've put together all the interesting facts and figures right here.

Business intelligence (BI) software truly lives up to its name. At its core, BI is all about data analytics, and it is able to accept overwhelming amounts of data in short periods of time to use advanced analysis algorithms to search for trends that even the most experienced statistician cannot find.

By swapping out customer fields such as previous number of purchases, order size, and order frequency, in favor of patient fields such as income level, English proficiency, housing conditions, and community resources, hospital administrators can provide extra care that will help prevent expensive readmissions.

By combining socioeconomic data with electronic medical records (EMR) in a BI software environment, hospitals and doctor's offices can easily create patient profiles that will predict how likely they are to require readmission, even before care is provided.

For the context of this article, readmission is when a patient returns for more care within 30 days of the original hospital stay. Cases like these usually stem from conditions immediately following the initial visit, such as mismanagement of the original condition, improper self-medication, and not enough access to proper medical services and medications in their community.

For practices looking for methods to reduce readmissions by three percent or greater, predictive analytics allow doctors to ensure that certain types of patients can totally avoid readmissions with proper initial care.

With effective implementation of these solutions, hospitals can save a lot of money. After reducing the incidence of readmissions by 6,000 patients annually, one particular practice was able to save $72 million on medical services, avoid $4 million in Medicare penalties, and boost its reputation by leaps and bounds.

Big data isn't only for big business. BI software can deliver your practice unprecedented levels of care and efficiency, and we're the ones who know how to get it done. Whether you want to lower readmission rates or ensure your EMR compliance, call us today to partner with a trusted IT expert.