Using Data to Achieve the Triple Aim

The triple aim of healthcare is to achieve good quality of care, low costs and improved population health. It was a term dubbed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in 2008 when it created a framework for optimizing health system performance by simultaneously focusing on the health of a population, the experience of care for individuals within that population and the per capita cost of providing that care.

Fast-forward a decade later and it’s not just a good way to operate, but a necessary one, too, as healthcare reform is forcing the move away from fee-for-service and toward value-based care. As cost, quality and outcomes become the focus of today’s healthcare landscape, health IT, with its ability to harness data through analytics, is emerging as an obvious player. Keep reading for the different ways analytics can give providers—and payers—the tools they need to make improvements and achieve the healthcare triple aim.

• Data and quality care: Providers can use real-time data to help clinicians make decisions about patient care, as well as improve future patient care through the capture and analysis of patient satisfaction surveys. Data also can be harnessed to help healthcare organizations standardize and streamline care across individual physicians or entire hospitals or clinics.
• Data and improved population health: Using MedPar and other publicly available data to benchmark against other healthcare organizations, hospitals can identify opportunities for clinical and financial improvement in the management of specific patient populations.
• Data and reduced costs: Whether for identifying clinical variance, streamlining supply chain management or using real-time data to predict staffing needs, data can be used in a number of ways to reduce waste and cost for a hospital.

Between new and increasing healthcare regulations and the advance of healthcare technology, the vast amount of data that is available and that needs to be collected requires careful curating and a clear governance plan.

Learn more about how to start a data governance initiative in our white paper.