Data Quality and Governance - Essay Example

Data quality in healthcare refers to a state of quantitative and qualitative information collected, processed, verified, analyzed, and stored for future use. Healthcare data is considered high quality when it is fit for the intended use in operations, making decisions, and planning. On the other hand, data governance is the process and procedure an institution ensures management and protection of their data. In this case, data would mean either all or section of the institution’s digital or hard copy assets. The data is the patient record, blood test results, billing, drug prescription, and other enhanced medical procedures regarding the healthcare industry. Data quality and governance are an essential component of the healthcare system need attention to better healthcare provision.

The quality healthcare data set should include capture, structure, and transfer. That would mean a summary of the process from when the staff entered the relevant information into the computerized health records and then store them properly. The data should also be delivered to the right place at the right time. At the transfer stage, the data is extracted from storage to the back-end database connection. Here key factors are considered together with efficient transport mechanisms to ensure quality outgoing data. It is also essential to use tools to qualify and quantify data. If there are no metrics to measure certain data, then the organization will improve it. When dealing with data, it is essential to manage the process than staff. That means improving care quality; an organization should have advanced and specific tools, methods, and techniques relevant in the healthcare market.

The data should be on time, date, and delivered in the right format. Any medical facility that wants to manage care delivery properly should have accurate and visible data. Also, that data should be delivered on time in a required format and to the required location. When that happens, it would mean that the data has served its purpose and therefore qualifies to be referred to as quality data (Tse et al. 2018). Such can be a success when the frontline health workers commit to always improving the quality of their input to the medical care data. It is possible to achieve that since most healthcare givers have a clear understanding of the role that technologies and accurate collection of data play in the healthcare industry.

Data quality can improve or hinder health care quality initiatives. The hindrances happen because of various reasons which are preventable. Some healthcare institutions report no data available in the systems since there is no data fed in their system. In such cases, there will always be gaps in data (Sukumar et al. 2015). Therefore such blind sports would need to be addressed. At some points, data does not flow systematically or has got inclination since the person who collected it or fed it into the system had no neutrality. Moreover, there are still lots of useful old fashioned features which makes data qualification challenge. They are incorrect spelling, incorrect medical record numbers, and other incorrect information.

Governance of data provides standardized and structured procedures for sharing medical data to provide the best quality of care to every patient in a healthcare organization. It also ensures there are security and privacy of medical information (Tse et al. 2018). The Health Insurance Policy and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is an act enacted by the US policymakers to protect patients’ information and made hospitals and insurers legally responsible for the protection of such in formations

Strong data governance in healthcare can be achieved by categorizing and classifying a file system with patients’ health information. It may become difficult to govern what one does know about. For governance to be successful, the medical staffs need to gather folders and files for data storage. For every file that contains patients' information should be labeled confidential or sensitive. It is wise to correlate all the data about structures and classifications, then build a comprehensive risk profile that would be used to improve the governance process. Data governance reassess privileges; that is to say, its main goal is to provide each person or account with only the service they need to do the job.

Healthcare analytics is the process of analyzing current and historical care data to predict future trends, improve services, and further offer better management of diseases’ spread. It covers a broad range of procedures and offers insights, which are both macro and micro level. It is significant in improving patient’s quality of care, clinical data, diagnosis, and business management. Healthcare analytics is majorly used to optimize efforts in managing hospital and foundation donations and grants. In this industry, many care providers depend mainly on donations in order to meet their yearly expenses. Therefore organizing and tracking expenses and all activities is core for setting appropriate targeted achievements. It can further track the engagement of donors, retention, and contribution in the past.

Analytics provides the administrators with efficient information to enable the schedule and deploy a physician. In such a situation, it gives the institution a detailed view of the physician’s records, patient medical history, and the need to provide the right caregiver who would meet the patient’s needs (Dai et al. 2016). It provides a more comfortable and more crystal-in approach for insurance companies since they will get real-time measurements and historical visualizations. Therefore, they would adjust their policies, verify open claims, and offer better prices for services.

Questions for Discussions

1. Why is data quality and governance in healthcare important?

2. How does data governance differ from information governance?

In conclusion, data quality, governance, and healthcare analytics are all essential in health care provision. For instance, quality data will ensure that all data pertaining to a patient is adequately stored for future purposes. This would enable the industry to be efficient in their service provision. On the other hand, governance has all to do with the protection of the stored information about a patient. This information can only be accessed with the authorized person who will handle the data with care, knowing that it is sensitive. Therefore, analytics of healthcare will provide insight and counsel to the whole care fraternity on how to go in the provision of the best healthcare. That includes all the industry players, such as healthcare organizations, donors, insurance companies, and many others.