In today’s digital age, data is at the heart of decision-making across every industry. However, data is only useful when it’s accurate, up-to-date, and complete—which is why organizations must work diligently to handle their data with care.

Between automation, data appending, and audits, there are numerous ways to improve and maintain the quality of your organization’s data. However, the framework for doing so is unique in the healthcare industry, where data accuracy and accessibility are critical for patient care and regulatory compliance.

This guide explores the basics of data governance in healthcare and the practical steps for implementing it. Let’s begin!

Data Governance Defined

Arcadia defines data governance as “a framework for handling your organization’s data throughout its lifecycle to ensure it’s accurate, accessible, and secure.”

While this framework is essential for all types of organizations, it’s especially important for the vast amounts of data collected in the healthcare industry, which generates 30% of the world’s total data. This vast amount of data informs care decisions and improves healthcare processes—making proper governance critical to helping patients and operating efficiently.

What does data governance look like? Well-governed data is:

• High-quality: Data governance creates provisions for keeping data clean and error-free, otherwise known as practicing proper data hygiene. This process involves standardizing data entry, correcting and validating data, and updating it regularly.
• Properly managed: Think of governance as the plan for handling data and management as the execution of that plan. Effective data governance inevitably results in effective data management, ensuring that data is properly collected, stored, retrieved, and used.
• Policy-driven: Data governance outlines the rules for accessing and handling data. Healthcare organizations must balance data privacy with interoperability, which is the ability to share data across different systems.

Data drives decisions and patient outcomes in healthcare, meaning a strong governance framework isn’t just a strategic advantage in this industry: It’s a regulatory necessity.

The Importance of Data Governance in Healthcare

Data governance allows organizations to transform key information into actionable insights for informed decision-making and improved internal processes. In the healthcare industry, this results in the following benefits:

• Enhanced patient outreach: Just as marketing teams enrich their data to deepen their understanding of their customers and create engaging campaigns, healthcare organizations lean on data to develop targeted patient outreach. With clean data, healthcare organizations can send personalized reminders for relevant wellness programs, medication reminders, and other health services.
• Improved financial performance: Healthcare payers rely on precise data for claims processing and cost management, meaning well-governed data enables accurate billing, improved reimbursement processes, and more.
• Effective risk management: Healthcare organizations don’t just collect vast amounts of data: They collect sensitive data, such as patients’ medical details and billing information. A strong framework for handling this data protects against security risks, like data breaches, and compliance issues.

Above all, well-managed data allows healthcare staff to focus more on patient care and less on administrative burdens like data entry and retrieval. However, it takes proper governance in every stage of the data lifecycle—from collection to usage—to achieve this.

How to Implement Data Governance in Healthcare

1. Develop data management policies.

To implement data governance, healthcare organizations must first develop the policies and standards that will dictate their data framework. These policies should be comprehensive, covering:

• Roles and responsibilities: Assign specific roles for ensuring data quality, such as validating first-party patient data and handling the technical aspects of data storage, like using data analytics tools.
• Data standards: To standardize data entry, define how team members should format different types of information. As a result, you’ll improve data reliability and interoperability.
• Monitoring systems: Reinforce data governance frameworks through training programs and regular audits to ensure continual adherence to the outlined policies.

A strong framework ensures your staff properly manages and utilizes data throughout its entire lifecycle.

2. Improve data accessibility.

While data accessibility is crucial in many industries, it’s especially important in healthcare where timely decision-making can make the difference between a positive patient outcome and costly mistakes. Improving accessibility ensures you properly record, store, retrieve, and use your data.

One of the primary contributing factors to data accessibility is centralization. In other words, store all data in one repository, where various team members can access the information they need when they need it.

3. Implement data analytics tools.

To enable effective data governance, healthcare organizations must embrace evolving technology purpose-built to handle industry-specific data. By consolidating data into a unified system, healthcare organizations can govern data in one place, even when it comes from various repositories, such as:

• Electronic health records (EHRs)
• Data warehouses
• Health information exchanges (HIE)

In addition to giving healthcare organizations a comprehensive view of their data, analytics solutions improve data quality and accessibility by automating many data management processes. Most importantly, these platforms enable healthcare organizations to derive actionable insights from their data for informed decision-making.

Dashboards are a particularly powerful tool for analyzing data-driven insights, as they simplify data and forecast future health trends. Implementing such tools requires healthcare organizations to explore healthcare dashboard examples and understand their capabilities. From there, organizations can customize dashboards to their specific needs.

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Data governance isn’t simply a best practice for healthcare organizations; it’s a necessity. By establishing a solid framework, industry leaders can equip themselves with actionable and accessible data that drives improved outcomes and organizational success. As healthcare organizations collect and manage record-breaking amounts of data, strong governance will set the foundation for long-term success.