Data – that most abstract modern term – is a crucial component of modern healthcare. Knowing what to do with that data is equally important. From leveraging data in order to make stronger business decisions, to protecting your patients’ health records and personal information, data governance in healthcare plays an important role in improving medical care for everyone. Let’s explore what data governance entails and why it matters to your healthcare facility.
What is Data Governance in Healthcare?
Hospitals, private clinics, health insurance companies and other healthcare facilities are tasked with maintaining accurate, secure and accessible patient records.
In order to understand data governance, it can be helpful to review what it is not. Data governance — while an essential component of data management — does not create the entire data management picture.
According to Oracle, “data management is the practice of collecting, keeping, and using data securely, efficiently, and cost-effectively … to help people, organizations, and connected things optimize the use of data.”
The Core Components of Data Governance
Data governance extends data management to address different goals. Data governance entails the following components:
- Establishment of policies and security procedures that govern data use within an organization, including HIPPA and GDPR.
- Designation of data management and data access roles, ensuring that data is only accessible to users who need to utilize that data.
- Historical data access records that allow administrators to see who accessed a particular piece of data, what modifications were made and when this occurred.
- Data mapping, which allows users to have a better understanding of where data is located within the organization’s larger data framework.
Through data governance, organizations experience stronger data quality and greater efficacy as they strive to leverage that data. Data governance in healthcare is particularly important due to the massive volumes of data that are generated during doctor’s appointments, hospital visits, diagnostic testing and procedures. Third-parties, such as pharmacies and health insurance companies will also utilize these same data sets. Much of the data that’s generated in the healthcare field is fairly sensitive. It’s not information that a patient would want to be publicly visible. So in healthcare, data governance is about much more than improving data management; it’s about taking extraordinary measures to protect patients’ private information.
Benefits of Data Governance in Healthcare
By leveraging big data, and ensuring that quality data governance practices are in place, healthcare organizations and their patients can achieve several benefits, including:
- Improved data quality and visibility.
- Reduced data management costs.
- Access to a quality data lake for advanced analytics, Predictive Analytics and data visualization tools.
- Stronger, more reliable data security.
In short, data governance is a core component of a comprehensive data management strategy. It allows healthcare organizations to identify trends, such as correlations involving the time between patient discharge post-surgery and subsequent re-admissions. Effective healthcare data governance can also lead to reduced medical costs associated with poor inventory management, staffing issues and more.
Getting Started with Data Governance in Healthcare
Healthcare organizations seeking data management and data governance assistance have access to powerful tools to streamline the process. 7T’s data tool, Sertics, makes data management, governance and data lake creation simpler than ever before. Sertics removes the need for added developers, DevOps, and data scientists by leveraging an easy-to-use drag-and-drop data consumption interface with stringent data management protocols.
If your healthcare organization is ready to put data to work, reach out to 7T. Learn more about how we empower businesses to accomplish more, faster.