What You Should Know:
- Intelligent Medical Objects (IMO), a healthcare data enablement company, conducted a survey of more than 300 provider leaders who are responsible for implementing and purchasing technology at healthcare provider organizations. The survey, titled ‘Intelligent Insights: Data challenges, tech investments, and shifting provider priorities’ uncovered many surprising findings and some seemingly universal truths about the challenges U.S. provider organizations are facing and how they plan to improve patient care in the years to come.
- While there are a myriad of external factors affecting day-to-day operations that these organizations have little control over, including regulatory changes, and staffing shortages, one area where they can take tangible action is where investments are made in uncertain times. In fact, 94% of provider leaders plan to invest in software to proactively address each of two widely publicized healthcare industry headwinds – clinician burnout and a potential recession. Additionally, 98% of respondents openly acknowledged that their provider organization must improve the way it leverages data to confront the challenges ahead.
Heralding a New Era in Software Investments
“Hospital providers face a lot of uphill battles – from data integration to clinician burnout – and this survey shined a light on how data integration can have a positive impact on patient care and day-to-day operations,” said Ann Barnes, IMO’s CEO. “It’s helpful to understand the most pressing needs as USprovider organizations are making bold changes to improve patient care and are adapting their strategies faster than ever before.”
Additional findings include:
Data quality issues are prominent amid a host of other critical challenges.
Provider leaders are experiencing a multitude of threats – both internal and external – but 71% cited maintaining or improving clinical care quality as the most important internal risk, while data quality issues ranked within the top five.
• Clinical staff burnout at 65%
• Administrative staff burnout at 50%
• Data issues (fragmentation, management, optimization) at 45%
Inefficient data use a challenge that must be addressed.
Providers nearly universally admit they lost money because of inefficient data use. Providers also acknowledge they must improve how they use data to address challenges. Overall, a shocking 90% of provider leaders admitted to situations where they had lost or leaked revenue due to inefficient data use.Approximately 98% of respondents openly acknowledged that their provider organization must improve the way it leverages data to confront its challenges. Investment in software to address administrative challenges is a priority.
• 94% of provider leaders plan to invest in software to proactively address each of two widely publicized healthcare industry headwinds – clinician burnout and a potential recession.
• 90% rate clinician burnout as a concern for their provider organizations.
Working with multiple software vendors is challenging.
Provider organization leaders work with dozens of software vendors that contribute to data silo challenges. It’s no secret that healthcare provider organizations have some of the most complex technology infrastructures of any industry. The survey found that:
• 84% of provider organizations report working with more than 20 individual vendors, which can create a major integration and management nightmare for everyone involved.
Working with multiple vendors can be frustrating, and the survey uncovered that the biggest and most-common complaint providers have about vendors varied. Overall:
• 32% reported software integrations as their biggest frustrations with vendors.
• 29% reported inadequate training provided by vendors as their biggest frustration.
• 17% reported long implementation timelines as their biggest vendor frustration.
AI isn’t living up to the hype – yet – but provider leaders are still hopeful for future impact.
AI has arguably been the most talked about technology for driving meaningful change in healthcare for most of the last decade. However, it is taking time to gain traction and not always performing as expected.
• 85% of provider leaders think AI has received too much hype. Yet, at the same time, providers are overwhelmingly adopting AI to both improve clinical quality and administrative functions.
A strong majority favorably view the impact AI has had to improve clinical quality (81%) and administrative functions (83%) for their provider organization. Among the 17% with unfavorable views of AI’s effect on their provider organization, 98% of that group are still hopeful for AI’s future capacity to impact administrative performance and efficiency.
“For technology to have a positive impact on providers, it has to get out of the way and integrate seamlessly into clinical workflows,” said Dr. Steven Rube, Chief Clinical Officer at IMO. “This survey validated an assumption that we at IMO had. That providers needed assistance to seamlessly integrate relevant clinical data in the care of their patients. The pandemic unleashed a torrent of investment in new healthcare software solutions, and provider organizations have struggled to understand which types of software will present the best ROI. IMO ensures clinical data integrity and quality—making patient information fit-for-purpose across the healthcare ecosystem.”
Takeaways
While there is no shortage of challenges facing healthcare providers in the US, data issues rank high among them. As reported by 90% of respondents, provider organizations are losing revenue due to inefficient data use, while almost every survey participant said they need to improve how they leverage their information.
Given the numerous benefits of creating and using high quality data, these responses come as little surprise. Complete and consistent data can inform better care, enable greater reimbursement, fuel innovation, and help alleviate the tech burden weighing so heavily on clinicians and staff. But too many organizations are settling – unnecessarily – for less than what their providers and data teams deserve.
