Healthcare Analytics for Quality and Performance Improvement

CHAPTER 12

Becoming an Analytical Healthcare Organization

Business intelligence and analytics excellence “is achieved when organizations have in place the strategy, people, process, and technology approaches that result in business impact, value, and effectiveness.”1 Analytics excellence, as it relates to healthcare quality improvement (QI), is when the strategies, people, processes, and technologies are applied to improvement initiatives and positively impact the quality and performance of a healthcare organization (HCO).

Being an analytical organization requires more than simply acquiring or possessing the tools and technology of analytics. To become an analytical organization, an HCO must ensure that:

1. The analytic needs of the business and stakeholders are understood;

2. The organization possesses the right analytical people and skill sets;

3. The technology infrastructure supports the analytical people and the analytical needs of the business;

4. The analytical people are deployed on the right projects and are working on activities that move the organization closer to achieving its performance and quality goals; and

5. Healthcare leaders, QI teams, and other decision makers actually use the information and insight available through analytics.

Items 1 through 4 in the list above are issues that must be addressed in the HCO’s analytics strategy. (See Chapter 3 for a discussion of analytics strategies that drive healthcare improvement.) Ultimately, the analytics strategy ...