How to build trust in EHR data and analytics in your organization

Electronic health record (EHR) implementation is a heavy lift that directly impacts clinicians, staff, patients, and other stakeholders across the healthcare ecosystem. Before, during, and after go-live, leaders are focused on how to realize the full benefits of this significant investment.

If the implementation is planned and executed properly, the EHR becomes a centralized and reliable place for providers to store and access relevant health information that can be used to:

• Create a more seamless patient experience
• Manage and improve clinical workflow
• Facilitate research
• Inform and support public health initiatives

At the heart of supporting high levels of EHR user adoption, utilization, and proficiency is a critical question: How can we ensure end users trust that the data in the EHR is accurate, actionable, and enabling care that’s safe, effective, integrated, human-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable?

Building a data-driven culture through training and education

Implementing a new health IT system requires organizational buy-in through effective training and education. It’s important that everyone responsible for inputting EHR data understands the importance of the data and its uses.

Healthtech uses a phased implementation approach to provide sufficient education and training for data entry at every level — from those registering patients to nurses and doctors. By doing this, we help build a culture of data democratization and literacy where all employees understand that entering and using data is a standard and important part of their job.

Creating a data analytics strategy to build a learning health system

Ensuring data is accurately entered into the system is an important foundation, but it’s just the first step. It’s essential to have a strategy for putting the insights gleaned from the data into action.

A comprehensive data strategy allows leaders and organizations to effectively leverage modern infrastructure, proper governance, and the culture of data literacy and democratization. Ideally, this strategy would be created before you start collecting data, but with the help of implementation experts, like the team at Healthtech, it’s possible to course correct if you don’t have one in place.

A robust strategy contributes to establishing a learning health system that can help improve patient care, efficiency, systems and processes, and services.

Understanding health data and analytics maturity

As soon as an EHR system is implemented, a never-ending stream of data begins to roll in. It’s never static, so the analyses of the data are also constant. An analytics maturity assessment model (AMAM) allows an organization to appraise its current level of analyses and set out a plan for improvement.

There are different approaches to establishing an AMAM (including one from HIMSS), so find the one that works best for your organization. The more trust and confidence you build in your organization’s data and analyses, the more mature your capabilities can be, leading to ever more advanced work.

Developing an enterprise data governance framework

It’s not uncommon for organizational systems or policies to start out strong but degrade over time. Maintaining integrity takes planning and maintenance.

Establishing a data governance framework ensures your data and analytics remain accurate and reliable. This framework should encompass:

• Governance
• Security
• Quality
• Transparency
• Continuous monitoring and feedback

Establishing trust in data leads to more effective healthcare

We’ve all been there — we encounter data (whether in the form of a graph, chart, infographic, article, etc.) that contradicts what we feel is true, so we doubt the accuracy of the data, not our idea of what’s true.

I’ve seen clinicians doubt the accuracy of EHR data in this same way. If practitioners don’t have faith that the data is being gathered and analyzed correctly, they doubt its accuracy instead of examining how they can improve the level of care they’re providing.

While there are instances where data is wrong, using the above steps helps to protect its accuracy, gaining the trust of those using it to improve patient care.

Looking for guidance pre- or post-EHR implementation? Healthtech provides end-to-end EHR support—including planning, implementation, optimization, and data maturity. Contact our experienced team to discuss your goals and priorities.