Charlie Farah was the Director of Performance Monitoring, Systems Improvement and Innovation at Sydney LHD, a leading local Health District in NSW. The Directorate provided a central location to garner knowledge and expertise in performance analysis and reporting, activity-based funding & casemix, clinical coding (including education), costing, clinical and process redesign expertise.
From a financial, operational and clinical perspective, access to timely, accurate and intuitive data was critical to successfully supporting the workforce of more than 10,000 staff to continually improve on performance.
In 2012, Farah and his organization came across Qlik, which became an integral component in its performance framework from the outset. “Its ability to connect numerous disparate sources of data (a challenge across every healthcare organization) in an intuitive, timely and accurate manner was groundbreaking,” says Farah.
Farah is now Director for Healthcare and Public Sector, APAC, Qlik. In an interview with Healthcare Innovation, he talks about his experience in the Australian healthcare system, the challenges facing the healthcare ecosystem when it comes to data managing, and what Singapore is doing right in managing its aging population in terms of health IT.
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The Australian Experience
According to Farah, Qlik allowed the health service to manage extremely complex analysis of performance data to support decision making and helped him provide sound strategic (evidence-based and data-driven) advice on performance trends, opportunities for service improvement as well as analyze the impact of policy and organizational change.
The biggest opportunity was the vastly improved engagement with the core workforce through data.
“Due to the intuitive nature of the system, the perception of the value data possessed within our organization changed. Rather than just being satisfied with asking ‘what happened?’, staff were enabled to link disparate sources to ask ‘Why?’ and ‘What is likely to happen next?’. By empowering the staff to question the data, they continued to be interested in discovering more; openly discussing the figures and improvements to be made to the existing processes,” reports Farah.
Sector Challenges
Farah argues that the healthcare sector has been quick to adopt medical technology, but slow in other aspects such as system redesign, innovation, and change management, as compared to other industries. Healthcare transformation entails actions as fundamental as reinventing payment models and systems, as prosaic as improving patient-scheduling, and as multi-faceted as empowering clinicians for better decision making. “All these actions require more accurate, granular, and contextual intelligence based on sound data,” suggests Farah.
Additionally, while organizations are struggling to adapt to complex healthcare requirements, they are facing substantial systemic and cultural barriers. Without addressing these challenges, value generation from analytics will remain limited. Healthcare modernization requires change across three main interconnected aspects that have little to do with technology: culture, system, and process.
Ensuring that staff is trained in areas relevant to information is key to achieving excellence. For instance, growing talent around data science or best practice in self-service analytics is a great incentive in Farah’s opinion. “The Singapore Government’s initiative to train up to 10,000 public servants in data science is a fantastic demonstration of the support and empowerment needed,” he opines.
The Data Explosion
With data growing exponentially across all industries, the healthcare sector has spent the last 20 years digitizing medical records, and the amount and sources of data will continue to grow. In addition to electronic medical records, data is collected through numerous channels and devices. Understanding the whole story hidden within these data sources, in addition to the existing workforce, finance, procurement systems, has become a daily struggle for healthcare organizations.
“With the deluge of information at our disposal, an essential and probably the most vital element of the decision-making process is having data governed and presented through visual analytics,” says Farah. The aim, for him, is to uncover relationships in the disparate data sources so they become immediately obvious. This will allow health professionals and their patients to see the whole story and reap the absolute benefit; being better, smarter and quicker healthcare for all.
Across Singapore and the APAC region, there is a massive focus on improving efficiency and cost. Payment models are shifting from activity to outcomes based and there is significantly more attention on quality measurement. “There is also an increased focus on population health and prevention models, and importantly a thirst for greater transparency in all public health services. Reassuringly, we are seeing these same trends globally,” Farah says.
“Whether analytics is used to reduce variation, improve access to services, better manage health workforce, provide tighter controls on procurement of health goods, eliminate bottlenecks in emergency or surgery, monitor patient satisfaction, foster more integrated and connected care across community, understand and manage chronic disease more effectively or understand cost; one thing is for – governed healthcare analytics is no longer an option but a necessity,” Farah asserts.
Looking at the Big Picture
The number of elderly citizens in Singapore is expected to triple to 900,000 by 2030, and chronic diseases are becoming more prevalent. With numerous factors impacting the quality of healthcare, there is room for technology to play a major role in streamlining healthcare.
“This is why deploying an analytics platform to see the ‘whole story’ is imperative for a Smart Nation like Singapore. With an intuitive analytics engine that integrates all the individual databases, the ability to freely navigate data will allow healthcare workers to leverage insights allowing precision when deciding appropriate treatment and dispensing personalized medicine. These insights provide greater understanding to each patient’s individual needs, allowing for smarter treatment.,” Farah says.
He argues that having a ‘nation-wide’ view of healthcare processes allows the Singapore Government to drive decision making through data, ensuring citizens receive the right care from the on-set. “Whether that be by funding private organizations, reducing waiting time at public facilities or by reducing or eliminating ‘low-value’ care to make better use of healthcare resources and funding,” he says.
“Rather than treating the sick, we are testing the well which costs money, takes time, consumes resources and impacts the patient. Therefore, it is imperative that healthcare is made more proactive, using data to guide staff to make better, faster decisions,” he concludes.
Date:July 21, 2017