Home Health Care How tracking and visualizing data leads to better patient outcomes

How tracking and visualizing data leads to better patient outcomes

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Healthcare institutions have access to large amounts of patient data, but oftentimes it is so complex and disorganized that they spend more time managing their data than analyzing and actually using it. When this happens, patient care may be negatively impacted. Data visualization is the key to helping healthcare providers organize, understand, and use data to its fullest potential without having the compromise the quality of their patient care.

4 Ways Data Improves Patient Care

Predicts Risk
In order to provide the best care, healthcare providers may need to combine multiple data points to improve their understanding of patient behavior. Analyzing demographic data, for example, can assist preparation for better patient outcomes. A study evaluating hospital re-admission after a heart attack found that patients with financial barriers to attaining services or prescriptions had a higher risk. Additional research found that living alone or feelings of loneliness can lead to a decline in mental and physical health.

While the results of these studies may not come as a surprise, being able to predict which patients are at a higher risk based on medical history, demographics, or personal situations can help arrange early intervention and improve the treatment process. If physicians are able to access, correlate and analyze patient data in aggregate, they may be able to provide more individualized and preemptive care.

Provides Real-Time Evaluations
Access to real patient response data can take the guesswork out of improving patient satisfaction. Eliciting feedback from patients provides an opportunity to highlight and address areas in need of improvement. For example, you may be prioritizing decreasing wait times when your patients do not care about that. They may want better communication with their doctors, cleaner facilities, or better pain control instead.

After the feedback has been solicited, it must be aggregated and shared in an accessible format. A data visualization tool can compile all patient feedback into a convenient, easy-to-understand dashboard that updates in real-time with each new evaluation. That way, healthcare institutions can immediately make changes based off the real preferences of their patients.

Enhances Efficiency
One way to improve efficiency in healthcare is to reduce the variation in practices and procedures. These variations occur when there is a gap between the desired best practice and current practice. Visualizing data related to quality, outcomes, and cost in a dashboard can help identify areas of unnecessary variation, set realistic goals for improvement, and monitor your progress. By reducing variation in patient care, healthcare providers can ensure that the most optimal procedures are being used. This will lead to better patient outcomes without having to increase costs.

Improves Communication
Sharing information in a way that is easy to access and interpret is considered to be one of the best approaches for improving patient outcomes. After all, what good are data and insights if they can’t be communicated and interpreted by the people they affect? A data visualization software that can incorporate multiple data streams into a single view is an effective way to share and communicate patient data.

Charts and graphs are easy to understand for everyone involved – hospital staff, healthcare administrators, physicians, and even the patients themselves. This is crucial because the relationship between a physician and their patient is built on effective communication. Patients rely on their doctors to provide accurate and complete information about their diagnosis, medication, and more. Data visualization can make it easier to show a patient complex data in accessible terms that put their experience into context. Additionally, visualizing patient data streamlines communication between healthcare professionals, leading to better and timelier intervention and action.

Photo: goir, Getty Images

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