Of all the industries in which we work, none compare to healthcare for the complexity of data quality management. At the same time, with real people’s lives at stake, bad or incomplete data in healthcare has the potential to cause more harm than in virtually any other environment.

There are many factors that must be considered when looking at data quality in this industry, including the broad range of data sources and users – hospitals, clinics, physician’s offices, pharmacies, insurers, governments, accreditation authorities, benefit managers, researchers and more – as well as legal and regulatory requirements that add challenges of their own. This is why we work so closely with clients in healthcare on data quality management that takes their unique needs into account.

Even within a single healthcare organization, applications and data intersect over multiple functions. Traditional data warehousing, Master Data Management (MDM) and data governance protocols are often not sufficient to avoid an inefficient tangle of redundant connections and dependencies in some functions while leaving gaps in others.

Our primary approach to data quality management in healthcare is Data Harmonization. Rather than identifying the most important data and giving it primacy, Data Harmonization places functions at the center, supporting them with the data and advanced analytics they need. This improves outcomes, increases revenues, cuts costs and speeds up the delivery of care by unlocking value in high-quality data brought in from a variety of sources to serve specific functional needs.

To ensure the quality of this data, we work with clients to implement comprehensive information management ecosystems, spanning the entire data lifecycle from creation to archival. We help organizations automate processes, decrease redundancies, implement effective controls and incorporate meaningful compliance mechanisms. The result is procedures, policies, and standards that ensure data quality and uniformity even in the most complex of healthcare environments.

Are you interested in ways to improve data quality in your organization for improved insights? Contact us today to learn more.