By Steven Dunn, Sales Director, DataBay Resources
In our previous post, we highlighted the importance of strategic planning in building a sustainable future for healthcare facilities, and highlighted market awareness and the questions you need to answer in beginning to formulate your plans.
Data Access
Now you have a list of questions that need answers. Where do you go to find the answers? Many hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers utilize discharge data to help answer these questions.
Discharge data can help an organization examine its primary service area and better understand the ever-changing market dynamics. There are different types of hospital discharge records available in each state – outpatient (OP) or ambulatory surgery center (AMB), emergency department (ER), and inpatient (IP) and observation (OBS) data are some. Discharge data sets are collected based on requirements established by legislation from the state government. Mandatory requirements vary considerably based on the state, and submission is usually quarterly, with some states mandating receiving data annually. Hospital and ambulatory discharge records come from the UB-04 form that contains information on the date of admission, date of discharge, patient’s age, gender, county of residence, and primary and secondary ICD-10 and CPT diagnosis codes, etc.
Data Analysis
Once you have your questions and your data, you should be set now – right? The only problem is that when you are looking at the data, it’s only leading you to ask more questions…
- Are other hospitals or free-standing surgery centers getting a larger share of high profit cases (private payer) and therefore have a better payer mix?
- Is my demographic changing?
- Is volume shifting, or is the type of procedure by age or location increasing?
- Should we add service lines?
- Do we need more or less physicians, where do they need to be located and where are our physicians taking their cases?
The truth of the matter is that data is useless without the tools and skills to analyze it. Find a partner with technology and applications that will either enable you or assist you in interpreting the data. Researching the market typically includes market share reporting, analyzing volume, service needs and competition. Having a mapping and data visualization tool to help you better understand the data profile sets and help you determine priority areas and identify intervention opportunities will be important.
The three capabilities of market awareness, data access and data analysis should be reviewed on a continual basis. The strategic planning process is never truly over. You must always be aware of the market, always be accessing new discharge data and always be analyzing the data. Don’t be afraid to monitor and revise the plan as needed.
Intalere subsidiary DataBay Resources provides strategic planning and market analysis software for interpreting and reporting on state and Medicare discharge data, disease-based predictive analytics to include consumer demographics and lifestyle segmentation, and physician manpower planning and database management.
Contact 877-711-5700 ext. 7213 or visit the DataBay Resources website to learn more.
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