The bulk of work in the healthcare industry is centered on offering quick and effective medical services to patients experiencing a wide range of health issues. From broken bones to heart attacks and cancer, there’s no shortage of tasks healthcare workers must tend to and accomplish daily.
In recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic posed an additional challenge to healthcare professionals worldwide. Apart from maintaining their regular care and responsibilities, they have faced an influx of patients seeking treatment due to the virus and other emerging diseases.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP), despite the world operating at near pre-pandemic levels again, new hospital admissions are forecasted to hit between 2,500 to 13,100 in February 2023.
Healthcare professionals already face numerous adversities in caring for their patients. Still, they must handle other tasks as part of their duties in the hospital, including data collection and management.
Understanding Healthcare Data Management
Healthcare data management—also called medical data management—is storing, protecting, and analyzing patient records electronically. During this process, data is logically organized and kept in a secure environment for practitioners to access.
These data include the patient’s demographic details and medical history, classified as personal and sensitive information that needs strict management.
There are multiple benefits to healthcare data management, including the following:
1. It boosts patient engagement
Patients need to know their treatment plans, appointment schedules, insurance coverage, and other critical details. The more efficiently these particulars are organized, managed, and updated; the easier patients can access them.
2. It provides better alignment for medical providers
Whether for an appointment or an emergency, medical providers need to be able to access patient records immediately and make decisions based on this information. These records require a high level of accuracy, which you can achieve through careful attention to detail and regular updates.
Healthcare data management also provides better alignment for medical practitioners by allowing them to maintain a consistent standard across their organization’s systems. When all your information is stored in one place, it’s easier for everyone involved to understand how things work.
3. It improves patient care
When all the information about each patient is readily accessible, medical personnel can provide the necessary care quickly, improving the hospital’s overall services. It also ensures that the patient’s data is safe and that only authorized personnel access them.
4. It aids in business decisions
Healthcare data management allows professionals to analyze and use data for planning purposes. For instance, if an institution is looking to expand its workforce with only limited resources available, it can use healthcare data management to determine which area needs to be prioritized for additional staff requests.
Using this information, establishments identify parts within the facility that need the most urgent assistance and allocate resources appropriately to provide sufficient coverage and services.
5. It monitors physician activities
Healthcare database management provides an overview of physician activities, such as how many patients they see each day or how long it takes them to complete a procedure.
Administrators use this data to make necessary changes, improve the facility’s efficiency, or reduce risks associated with certain procedures.
5 Healthcare Data Management Challenges to Know
Although there are benefits to data management, there are challenges that come with it that you must prepare for to prevent any issues in the long run.
1. Fragmented data
The healthcare industry is one of the most regulated industries in the world. Medical organizations must be able to adhere to these laws and manage their patient data accordingly. However, handling heaps of data can be overwhelming.
Data fragmentation in healthcare occurs when different departments within the hospital use multiple systems and platforms for storing patient information. This disorganization makes it more difficult for healthcare providers to access relevant information quickly and efficiently when needed.
2. Regulatory compliance
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability (HIPAA) regulation protects healthcare data, so only authorized individuals access them. It requires all healthcare providers to follow specific data security guidelines and have a data breach plan; otherwise, they’ll be subject to fines and other sanctions from the federal state.
Following multiple regulations and compliance requirements is a lot of work in itself. While it’s challenging, there are plenty of resources to help manage healthcare data while adhering to these laws.
3. Data breaches
Since healthcare facilities work with personal and sensitive data daily, they become more prone to data breaches. One of the most common ways is through phishing attacks, where a medical staff may click on a link that appears to be from an organization they trust but is actually from a hacker.
This breach gives the hacker access to all of the medical files on that user’s computer and eventually throughout the network. It also leads to fraud, which makes having a fraud risk management plan within your institution helpful.
4. Data cleaning
Data cleaning involves removing incorrect or incomplete information from the dataset and ensuring that it’s in a format that other programs easily use.
It’s a complex process that causes challenges when maintaining patient privacy and accuracy. Healthcare providers need a system to track all patient record changes and crosscheck for discrepancies.
5. Data blindness
Data blindness is the inability to analyze data visually, particularly in charts and graphs. It’s a common data management problem for many healthcare providers, making it difficult to interpret information and agree on business decisions.
With data visualization for healthcare companies, you get transparency and clarity for a more efficient and straightforward way of servicing patients.
6. Manage Your Healthcare Data Right
Technology continues to provide useful tools for different industries, and the healthcare sector isn’t an exemption. As more facilities, big and small, utilize technologies to handle their data management needs, it’s only right to prepare for any challenges they may encounter in this type of work, specifically cybersecurity threats.
By knowing what to do, you reap the benefits of these advancements and create better and more secure processes in the facility. If you’re looking for a partner that offers access management software and other solutions to upgrade your organization’s data security measures, ask experts from Q5id and contact us today.
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