The complexity of medicine and the lack of common standards, practices and clinical vocabularies across the healthcare system makes getting clean clinical data a dirty task. There are many applications across a healthcare system that rely on master data, and a single error can have a far-reaching impact. In many businesses, errors in master data can be problematic and irritating. In healthcare, getting master data wrong can ultimately impact quality of care.
Let’s begin with a definition of Master Data Management (or MDM as we call it in the biz). Master data defines an organization. All of the critical pieces of data that are widely used throughout a healthcare practice, such as patient identifiers, addresses, etc., need to be consolidated across the entire organization into one master form. At its most fundamental level, MDM makes sure there are not multiple versions of the same data hiding in different information silos across a healthcare organization. The ultimate objective of MDM is to collect, match, and consolidate data to ensure a “single version of the truth” throughout the organization or wider healthcare system.
What does MDM mean for a healthcare organization?
Think of the systems that need to communicate using master data within a healthcare system. MDM makes it possible for a monitoring station collecting a patient’s vital information to communicate seamlessly with the hospital’s network. That data can then be transmitted to other devices and analytical tools to track trends in the patient’s overall health. MDM makes it possible to track a single prescription to remote monitors that look for drug interactions. This data can drive alerting mechanisms so doctors can proactively adjust treatment and avoid costly readmittance. Within a Health Information Exchange (HIE), MDM makes it possible to analyze a patient population to study a disease state, such as diabetes, through clinical studies of this narrow geography and handle public health questions that result.
Ultimately, improving patient health requires connected and personalized care. This requires a clean set of master data across a healthcare system to uniquely identify a patient or their provider. In this interconnected healthcare system, we can eliminate waste and errors in patient data through data sharing enabled by MDM.
Do you have any questions about business intelligence in healthcare? Add a comment below. We would also like to invite you to attend our April 21st webcast: Jump Start Your Healthcare Enterprise Analytics with Core Measures. We will demonstrate how top healthcare organizations are realizing the benefits of data analytics in such core areas as core measures, clinical alerting, surgical analytics, service line profitability, diabetes management, revenue cycle management, claims management and utilization. Register Today
