Jul 28
2015
How to Build an Effective Framework for Healthcare Information Collaboration
Guest post by Paul Smith, management consultant, North Highland.
Information collaboration is not new, but there is an increasingly critical need for effective collaboration to create an efficient healthcare ecosystem. How can healthcare organizations design collaborative frameworks that allow them to successfully manage vast amounts of data and create actionable information from that data?
One of the first, and perhaps most important steps, is to understand why it’s imperative to foster an environment that encourages and promotes information collaboration. The amount of data companies use to track performance can be overwhelming, and many companies are inclined to abandon their quest to connect results across the organization, particularly when redundant data sources conspire across the enterprise to prevent a single source of truth. While it’s easy to understand why it happens, this approach can inhibit an organization’s ability to address the management of its data.
The implementation of an effective, collaborative framework is imperative. Not only does it have short-term impact, like enforcing consistent data quality and use, but it also improves business results. Active collaboration can lower management costs and enhance an organization’s ability to analyze and interpret information over the long haul and:
- Improves the user experience for management, physicians, nurses, and patients
- Reduces data inaccuracies and redundancies
- Offers impact analysis across the organization for change requests
- Enhances the organization’s ability to drive insight analysis and action creation based on a balanced information asset environment
Furthermore, if a healthcare organization chooses not to enforce a collaborative information framework, there may be financial consequences. Inconsistency in reporting can lead to noncompliance with provisions of the Affordable Care Act, which require uniform reporting and analytics.
Interoperability Accelerator
What’s really at stake? One example of the potential damage insufficient collaboration can create is evidenced in North Highland’s recent work with a healthcare organization that wanted to improve its management environment. During the onboarding process, new requirements and analytics were captured and documented. The requirements were then coded, tested and deployed prior to completion of the data loads. The missing component was an understanding of the impact that those changes had to legacy analytics in use across the client’s enterprise. As a consequence of no established metadata environment, changes made to the analytical applications impacted numerous analytics and reporting downstream- resulting in massive rework. North Highland worked to remediate data continuity throughout the effected systems and establish a scalable metadata framework to grow analytical capabilities with the future needs of the organization.
This example underscores why it is imperative to implement a model that addresses and improves interoperability, collaboration, and information knowledge, which eliminates a significant amount of risk and creates a highly effective information collaboration governance program.
One successful model that can be followed to address this issue emphasizes a business first approach and requires that there is an overall culture of collaboration both internally and externally. It is based on three fundamental disciplines and supported with metadata foundation that connects and maintains the relationships between the three disciplines. The model’s pillars include:
- The Business Information Discipline (BID), which defines the data and information necessary to support the operational goals of each department, business unit or division within the organization. Roles and responsibilities within the BID vary based on the size of the organization, but certain roles are central to the discipline.
- The Systems and Network Discipline (SND), which defines the system roles and network analyst roles within the information environment. This is the discipline with the largest concentration of technical resources, each having a degree of stewardship responsibility.
- The Information Asset Discipline (IAD), which is responsible for creating, maintaining and delivering information asset management for the organization. IAD outlines governance implementation, stewardship roles and general management of information, enabling impact analysis across the organization.
Organizations must respond to healthcare laws and adapt business models to comply with necessary requirements, all the while continuing to monitor reform-related legislative changes and regulatory guidance. By following the outlined framework, healthcare organizations can create an unbreakable foundation that ensures consistency in data and enhances enterprise agility.