The healthcare sector has been experiencing a number of innovative changes from the introduction of electronic healthcare records, and advanced medical data entry solutions, to the transition to the latest expanded ICD-10 code set. The objective of all innovations is to provide more coordinated, superior quality care and for this the most important requirement is data, mainly proper administrative data. What is administrative data? This type of data results from administering healthcare services, enrolling members into health insurance plans and from reimbursing for services. The clinical content of administrative data may contain only the demographic characteristics and diagnoses of patients, and medical codes for procedures performed, but it is often used to assess the quality of healthcare and thereby improve care. Administrative data can help reduce the rates of disease and lower costs.
To handle health concerns effectively it is important to have timely availability of high-value clinical and administrative healthcare data. Diseases vary from brain disorders to nervous system disorders to infections to fever. With digital transformation and availability of reliable data, these diseases can be identified using improved ways and treated to minimize the negative effects of the disease and prevent further health problems like stroke or cancer or organ failure. Maintaining accurate healthcare data is useful not just for healthcare providers or patients, it is also helpful for students and scientists across many fields; healthcare information can also serve as secondary data for many researches and studies. When high-value clinical data is not available, the availability and quality of administrative healthcare data is proving very useful in fighting various disease conditions. These administrative data is collected routinely over a period of time by interacting with patients and their healthcare providers. Administrative data is typically used for purposes like payment and reimbursement. Therefore this data is reliable, and it helps researchers to understand rates of diseases and their side effects.
- A study published in NCBI that investigated which ICD-10 codes were most indicative of spinal cord and brain injuries helped researchers better understand the levels of neurotrauma experienced in certain populations.
- Reliable administrative data can help predict the development of neurological diseases. A study published online in Neurology used Medicare data (de-identified) from more than 200,000 people to better understand the onset of Parkinson’s disease.
- Researchers found that around 90,000 patients in their dataset were diagnosed with Parkinson’s in the year 2009.
- They studied the diagnoses and procedural codes that were most common in the patient records in the years leading up to the diagnosis.
With this information, they developed an algorithm that scanned the records of all the 200,000+ people to predict which of them would eventually be diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.- They achieved a notable success rate of 73%.
With this information, they developed an algorithm that scanned the records of all the 200,000+ people to predict which of them would eventually be diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.Studies such as these could be carried out in other medical specialties as well to gain more understanding of various diseases as well as predict the possibility of disease onset. Insurers may be able to identify this even before clinicians do with the help of artificial intelligence algorithms. Early detection of disease and appropriate intervention can help patients experience better outcomes. Combining clinical and administrative data could improve patient health while driving large-scale cost savings across the entire healthcare system.
There is no doubt that digital transformation and ready availability of healthcare data will unleash the power of patient data for better outcomes across the healthcare value chain. Increased patient monitoring capabilities along with data hubs using cell phone networks will drive health revenue, further reducing hospital inpatient census – this is according to Frost & Sullivan’s expert prediction. Optimization of resources, care coordination employing technology-based platforms, and products or services can improve the efficiency of healthcare delivery. Providers of medical document scanning and other healthcare support solutions expect that 2018 could be the year of big disruption, transformation and innovation in the healthcare industry.
