Data-Driven Healthcare: How Analytics and BI are Transforming the Industry

CHAPTER 5 Creating a Data-Driven Healthcare Organization

Last year, as we were working through some marketing content for 2013, we were discussing how to categorize the work that I do. It's not as easy as it sounds. I'm not a technologist; I can't come in and develop a report or write some code for data acquisition. The work that I do most appropriately falls under “soft skills.” I help organizations figure out what they want to do with their data and how they can achieve that in the most cost-effective, fastest way possible. We discussed a few specific scenarios, and then our marketing manager said to me, “You're like a data therapist.” It stuck.

For years business intelligence (BI) consultants ignored the organizational transformation that had to take place. It felt too much like management consulting, and most BI consultants are recovering information technology (IT) professionals. Carving out a niche in this area and, more important, showing the importance and value of the effort, took years. Thankfully, most healthcare organizations intuitively understood the undertaking and have continued to articulate the reasons why it's so important. Becoming a successful data-driven healthcare organization (DDHO) requires balancing people, process, culture, and technology.

Transforming the culture and creating an organizational structure that can support business intelligence is always a hot topic when I talk with a client. The trouble here is that we aren't creating a traditional ...