Data integrity. It – or a lack thereof – can make or break a business intelligence implementation. How can analysts make better decisions when there’s no consistency between data definitions across different departments and data sources?
Many hospitals are turning to data governance processes to help them manage their assets and ensure consistency between data. However, as a recent Dimensional Insight survey found, healthcare organizations are struggling to implement data governance. What are their most pressing concerns and challenges? Following are a few highlights from the survey.
How the survey was conducted
In August 2017, Dimensional Insight surveyed 104 members of a professional organization comprised of CIOs/CMIOs to ask them about their data governance efforts. The survey asked questions such as:
- Has your organization adopted an enterprise-wide data governance capacity?
- What were the primary drivers for adoption?
- Which obstacles have your organization faced during rollout?
- What is the total number of KPIs being governed?
Let’s examine some of the high-level findings.
Drivers for implementing data governance
The biggest reason that healthcare organizations are implementing data governance is to improve the trust in data. That result wasn’t too surprising. However, the #2 driver for data governance was to improve care quality – showing that improving patient care and outcomes is a huge priority for hospitals today.
Limited resources are a big roadblock for hospitals
Hospitals are plagued by too few resources. According to our survey, “limited resources” was both the biggest reason that hospitals are not adopting a data governance capability as well as the biggest reason that data governance implementations are stalling.
Here’s a graph that shows why some healthcare organizations have not yet adopted data governance.
Alignment on measures is difficult
When it comes to definitions of data measures, hospitals struggle to align definitions across the enterprise. Nearly half of hospitals govern fewer than 50 measures across their organization. And more than two-thirds of hospitals have measurement discrepancies that exist between different departments (such as clinical vs. financial) in their hospital.
Learn more
Download the full survey results to learn more about how hospitals are approaching data governance, how they are managing the process, and the challenges they are facing. Are there other challenges your healthcare organization faces regarding data governance? Let us know in the comments box below.
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Kathy started her career in television news writing and producing. She then worked at a public relations agency and as a freelance writer before joining Dimensional Insight in 2013.
Kathy has presented at several events in both healthcare and wine & spirits, including the Healthcare Innovation Summit, the Healthcare IT Marketing & PR Conference (HITMC), and the WSWA Women’s Leadership Council (WLC) Conference. Kathy is a Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) and a member of Women of the Vine & Spirits.
She is also host of the Smarter Healthcare Podcast (www.smarthcpodcast.com) and is a member of the Forbes Communications Council.
Kathy holds a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Boston University.
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