It is clear that the health care industry must transform to improve care quality and reduce costs. Health information technology (HIT) has the potential for impacting care delivery, and one of the areas that will continue to play a major role in this effort is big data and data analytics. The industry is looking to the massive levels of data being collected through HIT to identify cost savings and quality improvements. I recently read that within a decade the global level of health care data will see a fifty-fold increase, or the equivalent of moving from 10 billion to 500 billion four-drawer file cabinets. While HIT clearly has the capability to collect this data, health care organizations are overall at a loss for how to use this information to drive improvements in clinical outcomes, administrative operations, and financial performance. With the requirements of meaningful use increasing with the progressive stages of the electronic health record (EHR) Incentive Program and the activities of accountable care organizations heating up, health care organizations will be looking to REACH, vendors, professional associations and other stakeholders to help them better understand policy-related requirements for these programs and to understand the tools and resources to help them leverage their data to retrospectively understand their patient populations and clinical performance and predictively identify patients needing some type of intervention.
Based upon findings from a survey that we conducted of REACH clients, organizations do not have the trust in their data, the skilled workforce, or the technology to accomplish the major activities associated with data analytics. In an effort to assist REACH clients on their journey to better understand and apply analytics to their data, REACH has created the Data Analytics Portal. The portal is a comprehensive educational resource for clients to better understand meaningful use and all phases of the data analytics lifecycle, including data acquisition, extraction, aggregation, analysis, and interpretation. This portal provides REACH clients with tools and resources to assist with data analysis projects, including educational presentations, customizable tools, and online resources.
The portal consists of three major content areas—Understand, Collect, and Apply—and each content area has multiple sections. The portal covers all aspects of data analytics, including an introduction to data management, clinical quality measures project management, privacy and security, statistics, data mining, and using open source software.
Identifying areas for quality improvement and cost reduction is the purpose of meaningful use, and REACH is excited to be a part of this movement.
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