The Importance of Good Quality Data by Karen Snyder

The 3rd blog in the Healthcare Predictions & Perspectives blog series. This blog series is focused on healthcare transformational strategies that are enabled through Health IT and Health Information Governance best practices.

I am a terrible cook. So, it should come as no surprise that when I tell my teenagers I'm cooking dinner, they scurry out of the kitchen like roaches racing for the cover of darkness when you flick on a light. While my culinary prowess is certainly lacking, I can bake a mean chocolate chip cookie. I have a fool-proof recipe handed down from my grandmother that guarantees the tastiest, gooiest chocolate chip cookie each and every time. Well, almost every time.

You see, one Saturday not too long along, I had promised my daughter that I'd whip up a batch of her favorite cookies. I was late running errands, so rather than making another stop at the grocery store to pick up a bag of Nestle's Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels, I grabbed some no-name brand chips while shopping for project poster board at the Dollar Store, thinking I could kill two birds with one stone. The quality of these chips just couldn't compare to the chocolaty goodness of my Nestle morsels, and my no-fail chocolate chip cookies were a flop. Clearly, the quality of the ingredients, or in this case, the lack of quality, had a direct impact on the taste of the final product.

Just like good quality ingredients are needed to ensure the perfect chocolate chip cookie each and every time, so too is good quality data needed in healthcare to ensure positive clinical outcomes, reduce risks and lower costs. The heightened need for accurate and reliable data has never been more important, with the emerging focus on Information Governance. Healthcare organizations must recognize information as a strategic asset if they want to deliver superior patient care, focus on big data analytics, ensure accurate billings and manage the revenue cycle. In addition, identifying , remediating, and preventing duplicate patient records is critical to ensure proper identity management and the completeness and accuracy of data capture in a patient's health record.

You can follow the steps to a recipe, but if you don't start with quality ingredients, the final product will suffer. Good quality data is essential in healthcare because only with reliable information can healthcare providers provide responsible care. Meaningful data helps make informed decisions and to remain competitive, healthcare organizations need to confidently leverage data to positively affect the quality of care, contain costs and better manage patient identity and patient populations.

Join our Twitter Chat: Healthcare Transformation: Predictions and Perspectives #InfoTalk

On March 17th at 9:00 PT/12:00 pm ET, @IronMtnHealth is hosting a Twitter chat using #InfoTalk to further the dialog on transformational strategies that are enabled through Health IT and Health Information Governance. If you have been involved in Health IT and information governance-related projects, we'd love to have you join.

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2016/industry/healthcare-information-man...
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