As we move into a digital reality, data has emerged as the backbone of operations across all industries. Real-time data provides actionable insights, and retrospective analysis surfaces opportunities for attaining best practices and measuring progress towards goals. Furthermore, the collection of data builds out predictive analytics to identify patterns and trends that help anticipate future needs.
In healthcare, there is nothing more important than ensuring patient safety. Advancements in healthcare technology have enabled clinicians to collect, review and leverage more data than ever before in order to achieve optimal patient safety.
Using Data at Every Stage of the Journey to Impact Change Management
During Becker’s Hospital Review’s most recent webinar, Glytec’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Jordan Messler, MD, SFHM, FACP, and the University of New Mexico Health Sciences in Albuquerque's Dr. Kendall Rogers, MD, CPE, FACP, SFHM, discussed how to use data at every stage of a patient’s and institution’s journey to impact change and drive improvement. During the webinar, Dr. Rogers explained the role data plays in each stage of the journey.
Here are the key takeaways from the webinar:
- Data is the foundation of change management. The eight basic steps of change management (per the broadly recognized Kotter Model of Change) all benefit from incorporating the right data. Dr. Rogers said, "Using data can help us achieve situational awareness, create a sense of urgency, foster transparency and accountability and allow for real-time changes and improvements."
- Data should drive real-time situational awareness. Due in large part to the fact that no regulatory metrics exist yet, roughly 60 percent of hospitals do not have the automated ability to extract and analyze glucose data. Without targeted awareness of key glycemic management indicators – and with a profusion of available patient data of all kinds – Dr. Rogers warned that it’s easy for clinicians to, "get buried in data." He added, "It's amazing what just one glucometer is capturing. Our job is really to identify the signal versus the noise. We want to create real-time situational awareness so we can intervene now."
- Scaling Glucometrics now will set the stage for the future. Most healthcare facilities are examining total blood sugar events, and not patient day or patient stay metrics. The latter metrics are more clinically relevant, but often challenging to calculate locally. "We know in the next few years, we'll have continuous glucose monitors," Dr. Messler said. "We're barely wrapping our hands around four blood sugar measurements a day." The future is going to bring a higher volume of data and will require more sophisticated dashboards to distill actionable insights.
- Dashboards to visualize and share data, set goals and monitor progress are critical to long-term success. Scatter plots, run charts and Pareto charts are excellent ways to display data. By using these tools as part of a visual management dashboard, healthcare organizations can keep all stakeholders on the same page. Dashboards should measure what matters, facilitate the management of process change, highlight wins and deliver ongoing feedback. According to Dr. Messler, "Having a dashboard that incorporates many of these qualities can be difficult to build but, when instituted well, can really drive change."
- The art of storytelling must be leveraged to drive sustainable change. Although some people respond well to data and analysis, change is more likely to be driven and sustained through emotion — and visualizations with compelling storytelling can evoke emotions. "If we can generate some type of emotion, we are more likely to sustain some type of change," Dr. Rogers said. "Cultivate stories in your data."
Healthcare organizations continue to search for ways to improve monitoring and treatment of patients managing glycemic issues. By collecting, organizing and displaying the right data, facilities and providers can drive change within glycemic programs.
Learn more about how you can use data to improve patient outcomes and drive change management.
MAR-0000352 Rev 1.0
