The healthcare industry is in the midst of a radical digital transformation.

Many organizations spent the 2010s attempting to upgrade painfully-outdated data storage and record-keeping systems. While these efforts may have had the best of intentions, they often proved too unfocused and slow-moving to make a meaningful impact.

Covid-19 changed things. The pandemic sent a shockwave through the healthcare system that magnified its outdated digital capabilities and made improvement a matter of survival. While Covid-19 led to a proverbial raising-of-the-floor across the industry, the need for enhanced data and analytics capabilities in healthcare remains.

The short-term crisis may have faded, but a number of troubling dynamics remain, necessitating a more intelligent approach to healthcare operations going forward. These include a sudden and overwhelming demand for quality telehealth services, a rapidly aging U.S. population, a growing rate of chronic disease, and a potentially dire shortage of healthcare professionals. These factors further complicate the already-complex challenges associated with big data in healthcare. The upside is that they also amplify the potential rewards for those organizations savvy enough to solve them.

A recent report from RBC found approximately 30% of the world’s data volume is generated by the healthcare industry. The compound annual growth rate for this data is projected to reach 36% by 2025 —a full 10% higher than the projected CAGR for data produced by the financial services industry. Top healthcare organizations are in need of capabilities that better harness the power of this vast quantity of data and help them make smarter, faster decisions.

Today, many of those decisions relate to outsourced health services. “The basic rationale for outsourcing, in both health care and non–health care settings, is to partner with firms that offer expertise and economies of scale in a particular function in which they specialize (eg, laundry and laboratory services). The aims are often to lower costs, raise productivity, and improve quality,” write the authors of a recent article published in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

What started as a practice mainly relegated to back-office and support functions has grown to encompass specialties like laboratory services, anesthesiology, radiology, and emergency care. Outsourcing can also allow a healthcare provider to deliver new services they would not otherwise be equipped to provide.

The popularity of outsourcing in healthcare has exploded in recent years thanks to the potential for new revenue streams, cost savings, and enhanced patient care. A report from Precedence research pegged the global hospital outsourcing market at $270 billion in 2020, with projections to hit $685 billion by 2030. The upside of a fruitful outsourcing agreement is an exciting prospect for healthcare providers and payers alike. Yet healthcare executives must remain strategic and data-driven in their utilization of this practice to ensure positive outcomes.

“Although a primary goal of outsourcing is cost efficiency, the resulting financials often do not meet expectations, especially if the indirect costs of lower quality are accurately calculated as contributing to poor outcomes such as medical errors, loss of employees’ trust, and increased hospital readmissions. Lower quality also damages an organization’s reputation and can adversely affect referral patterns, patients’ comments on social media, and even hospital accreditation,” reads the aforementioned article published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

Organizational leadership must ensure any outsourcing agreement is both financially advantageous and aligned to core values of delivering quality service or care. The sheer volume of potential options and the complex considerations that influence such decisions can overwhelm even the most experienced of decision-makers. To cut through the noise and identify the best opportunities, healthcare organizations must leverage a data-driven approach that accounts not only for financial metrics, but also measures of patient
satisfaction and wellbeing.

Much of the data required to fuel such an approach may already exist. Yet in many organizations, it’s too scattered and disordered to wield effectively. The data may be dispersed across disparate silos, and turning it into an actionable format could require weeks or months of onerous extraction, compilation, and cleaning. What results is a painful lag in the data-to-value cycle that leaves an organization rudderless and perpetually underperforming

Enter iDashboards Enterprise Reporting from TruOI. TruOI is an operational intelligence platform that unifies your data and delivers both historic and real-time insight in a proven visual format. Our intuitive design requires zero coding and empowers stakeholders at every level of your organization to operate with a mindset of continuous improvement.

• iDashboards Enterprise Reporting platform connects, combines, and cleans data from over 160+ different data sources, including CRMs, finance software, HR software, web APIs, relational databases, ERPs, excel spreadsheets, text files, social media, Cloud apps, custom apps, and much more.
• iDashboards Enterprise Reporting platform seamlessly tracks metrics crucial to both daily execution and high-level strategic decisions and delivers that information in real-time via clear, customizable dashboards.
• iDashboards Enterprise Reporting platform ingrains operational business intelligence into your organizational DNA by delivering insight needed to reduce wasteful spending, promote faster response to changes like new regulation, and continually improve both profit margins and patient experience.

Implementing new technology can often feel like an uphill battle that halts the momentum of ongoing operations. But with iDashboards Enterprise Reporting platform, you have the ability to easily connect to all your existing and future data sources, digital transformation is just days away.

Your organization’s long-term health, and your patients’ health, may depend on how you harness your data. Join the numerous healthcare providers who use iDashboards Enterprise Reporting platform to combine multiple data sources into dynamic, effective healthcare, medical, and hospital dashboards.