Analytics can offer a wide range of benefits to healthcare organizations. It can provide information to make better decisions on or impact quality of care, patient outcomes, cost containment, operational efficiency and regulatory compliance. At a theoretical level, healthcare organizations understand these benefits. In fact, implementing analytics is on the top ten list of many healthcare organizations today. Ironically, most aren’t pursuing it to the level they need. So what’s stopping them? I’ve heard a number of different reasons over years and found that many are based on assumptions that simply aren’t true:
“Analytics are expensive and I don’t have the budget”
It’s true that enterprise analytics can be expensive over the long haul. However, when done properly, they can (and should) offer payback far more than the investment. Additionally, getting started doesn’t always require a large investment. There are tools and technologies available that allow you to test out analytics at a relatively low cost. Using these tools also allow you to see what technologies will and will not work for what you want to do.
“Analytics are a major undertaking and we just don’t have the time to do it right now”
Getting started on analytics doesn’t have to be a huge undertaking. In fact, it’s often best to start out targeting a specific area in which there is immediate business value. This allows you realize the ROI of the analytics application, as well as work out any issues in a localized fashion.
“I can’t convince others it worth the time or money”
You can present all the figures, whitepapers, articles, etc. and some people will still not understand the benefits of analytics. However, if you show an application of analytics targeted at solving a current problem they are facing, they suddenly get interested. People react better to something actually demonstrates solving their problems vs. reading theoretical material.
“The last thing we need is another silo’d application”
Building an analytics application targeted at a specific business problem doesn’t have to mean that it’s an end point. With the right approach, targeted analytic applications can be built in such a way to be easily expandable to other subject areas or even to the enterprise.
You can see from above that many of the assumptions people have regarding analytics are simply not true. While is always nice to have an unlimited budget and timeline for a project, we all know that never happens. Check back for future blogs on what I call “Targeted Analytics with an Enterprise View”. In these posts, I will be discussing an approach that can be highly effective in getting started on analytics and driving excitement about it in an organization.
