Data Analytics For Improving Hospital Management System — Saama Analytics

In today’s testing times, when the whole world is grappling with the pandemic, the healthcare industry is playing a vital role with respect to accelerated clinical trials and drug discovery phases to save lives impacted by the pandemic.

This has put additional stress on hospital staff to manage high volumes of Admission and patient care, maintaining Patient records in digital format. In the next section, we are discussing the Hospital Management system.

Hospital Management System

As the topic says how to efficiently manage the Hospital or chain of hospitals to provide better service to the Patient and Staff and Management.

As per Figure 1, where Patient Journey starts from taking an Appointment in the Hospital, meeting with Physicians and following the Line of therapy. On the other hand, Medical staff have to maintain the Patient Notes, their medical history for further reference.

Continuous Interaction with third parties like Drug Suppliers and Insurance companies play a crucial role in Settling the claim which leads to revenue generation and last but not least Financial staff take care of Payroll management, Profits, losses, Paying bills etc.

Figure 1: Hospital Management System

All this process involved lots of tracking and monitoring which required the involvement of Patients, Hospital staff, Hospital Management and Insurance companies.

Top 5 Pain Points during the life cycle of Hospital Management system

• Issue with Manual Transition Care Management
• EMR system: Manual way to monitor every patient treatment progress
• Identifying relevant Patient/s from the high volume of data from health records
• Low rate of Telehealth and Tele-Medicine
• Providing care to remote patients (RPM)

Role of Analytics Partner in Improvising HMS

Data Analytics firms have come up with a variety of solutions to extract the EHR/EMR Data in different formats such as structured/unstructured data like Images, CT Scan, X-rays by following HL7 standards which increase the number of contexts and services that can be included in aggregating the modern longitudinal patient record.

These solutions will help the different personas of the healthcare system which is explained in detail in the latter part of the document.

Managing HealthCare Personnel

Nowadays Data analytics firms offer solutions for better management of Hospital processes in areas of managing Health Care personnel by expediting and providing a smooth path for the HCP on their day to day operations. Here are some benefits illustrations for HCP:

• Based on the Patient medical history and prior medication define the line of treatment or therapy for better care of the patient
• Able to identify the At-risk patient leads to reduce the Re-admission rate
• Access to Patient level data to manage Medication, Procedures, Vaccinations, Lab results etc.
• This all is available in Near Real-time which is just a click away and easily accessible through Laptops, Tabs and smartphones.

Figure 2: Appointment Trend Dashboard

New Patient Referral management

• Identify the Top Physician who is the contributor for referrals which leads to building trust among Primary Care Physician (PCP), Specialists and Hospital chains and expanding the network for future growth.
• Contribution in an increase in Patient volume and retain established patients and an overall boost to revenue generation.
• Trend analysis of referrals in Single consolidated view(Refer Figure 3)

Figure 3: Patient referral

Hospital Staffs:

• By aligning Hospital staff in advance based on the Appointment type.
• Reducing “No Show” rate: By providing details of the Patient and purpose of the Appointment who missed the appointment, a coordinator will be able to identify the pattern of No-show and this will improve the utilization of space and HCP (Refer to Figure 2)

Role of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI /ML)

The inclusion of Artificial Intelligence will be icing on the cake by helping in scanning Physicians Notes which helps in Patient diagnosis and line of therapy for a specific disease or therapeutic area.

AI enablement in HMS can be beneficial in the prediction of Appointment management and reduce No Show Rate by providing suggestions to the application on the chance of Patients missing the scheduled appointment based on their geographical location, underlying medical condition.

Data security enablement

The EHR/EMR system provides personal health records which are confidential in nature, so data security has an important role in lowering the risk of Data breach.

There are data protection regulations formed by the US, UK and other countries that have clear guidance of the regulation and should be followed by all the solution providers who transfer, consume or process the data.

Data analytics firms ensure that HIPAA, GDPR regulations are taken into consideration while designing the solution for the Healthcare system. They also conduct training to create awareness of these regulations to their employees.

Patient Satisfaction

• Top reviews Positive or Negative
• Areas of Improvement/Suggestions
• Trend analysis on a Yearly, Quarterly or Monthly basis
• Retaining Patients and increase the Patient volumes

Patient Satisfaction plays a vital role in the progress and growth of the Hospitals and helps in improving the quality and service of Hospitals. Patient feedback gives an opportunity to improve their process. Usage of AI and deep learning with sentimental analysis helps in understanding the need of Patients to get better service and improve in the following ways:

Benefit in Clinical Trial

In this Pandemic era, where the entire world population is looking for New drug Discoveries, Vaccinations, Hospital data (EHR/EMR) opens the door for getting the potential Patients, identifying the Investigators and Clinical site for conducting clinical trials.

Conclusion

• Reducing their manual effort and reducing paperwork. Transitioning from excel to using interactive Dashboard.
• Contribution in maintaining, processing and providing meaningful insight through a secure and safe method.
• Increasing the efficiency and productivity of Physicians, Hospital staff, Third-party management by switching from manual to an automated solutions.
• Timely suggestion of Area of Improvement through Artificial Intelligence
• Data analytics would really help the healthcare industry take care of patients more effectively and improve the quality of life (QOL) in general.

In a Nutshell, Hospitals are helping in improving the Quality of Life (QOL) of people and integrating with Data analytic firms can help them in:

• EHR/EMR: Electronic Health Record/ Electronic Medical Record
• HL7: Health Level Seven (HL7) is a set of international standards used to provide guidance with transferring and sharing data between various healthcare providers.
• HIPAA: HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is United States legislation that provides data privacy and security provisions for safeguarding medical information.
• GDPR: The General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 is a regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy in the European Union and the European Economic Area. It also addresses the transfer of personal data outside the EU and EEA areas

Author: Pooja Dewangan
Pooja has 13+ years of experience spread across data management, analytics and providing solutions to customers in Life sciences Clinical operations, Patient Data domain, Hospital Management analytics, RWE platform.

Originally published at https://saamaanalytics.com on July 6, 2021.