Jan 20
2017
Hands-on Experience Leads to Better Data Mining
Guest post by Andrew M. Webster, MS, ASA, MAAA, Associate of the Society of Actuaries, actuary, Validate Health.
Predictive modelers working in the healthcare industry need to be one-part physician, epidemiologist, economist, and data scientist. Because healthcare is offered in a variety of settings, by a diverse set of highly-trained professionals, it requires health actuaries to model future healthcare cost and utilization with a high degree of precision.
It also requires a hands-on approach to data-mining.
During my decade-long career in healthcare, I’ve had the opportunity to work alongside clinicians while programming at an electronic health records (EHR) company and onsite in a hospital’s skilled nursing facility. Through those experiences, I gained firsthand knowledge of patient care delivery.
Because of that experience, I can recognize a sequence of patient events and care transitions when I see them in patient data. Observing how healthcare is delivered helps non-clinicians recognize which problems are most relevant to physicians.
Most clinicians want to know how data analysis will help improve patient outcomes instead of merely focusing on short-term cost reduction. Communicating the modeling results in a way that is meaningful to physicians and integrating results into their daily workflows is essential. While most physicians are not mathematicians, they are highly trained in the scientific method and ask insightful questions when reviewing modeling results from actuaries and data scientists.
As an example of the benefits of predictive modeling, my team helped a 20-physician independent practice determine which segment of its patient population was the most costly. By mining the practice data, we identified a specific Medicare Advantage Plan for patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder (COPD). The medical practice then used the data to redesign its discharge protocol and develop a COPD care management program to help keep patients out of the hospital, improve quality care and lower costs. The solution was effective because of the hands on approach from everyone involved.