Have you ever wondered, “How can my healthcare organization be more successful?” As technology and the healthcare industry continue to advance, you could be missing out on the one thing that can give you answers, healthcare analytics.
We sat down with Buxton Senior Vice President Bill Stinneford to tell us what your organization could be missing if you aren’t using healthcare analytics and how analytics can help you be successful.
How do I know if my company needs healthcare analytics?
In this realm, every company needs healthcare analytics because if you're not understanding your consumers for a particular service line, you're going to get left behind. This competitive environment and the evolution of the consumer is only going to get more intense. That sounds like strong language, but in any environment where there is competition and there is lots of money to be made, there are going to be winners and losers. If you would've told somebody in 2002 that Blockbuster would be completely out of business in 2018, people would've told you that you were crazy, but they are. The world changed. Netflix killed them, but so many other things killed them as well. They didn't stay ahead of how the consumer was evolving. If you're not taking advantage of location and marketing strategies that allow you to be efficient, then you're wasting precious dollars that your competitors are not and you're going to be eliminated. Analytics is that important.
If my organization isn't comfortable with using patient data for analysis, are there analytics options that don't use patient data?
We can build valuable solutions for our clients based on just the significant amount of data we already have on healthcare, consumers, healthcare demand and supply, and competition. We offer industry experience models for over 30 different service lines, so if you don’t want to share your data, we can still help you understand what the drivers of success are for your organization. We can then help you find/create new sites, help market to potential patients, help understand your existing portfolio, and help you with service line optimization. If you don't have data or can’t provide data, our experience, proprietary methodology, smart people, data sets and technology can still create very strong solutions to help you understand where to invest money, and where not to.
Can my company have too little or too much data?
From our standpoint, you can never have enough data, especially since Buxton is the biggest data geek. Even with massive amounts of data, we have the smarts, experience, and the processing technology to find the best solution for your company. We are the first to tell you that data in and of itself is worthless; it is what you do with that data that provides answers that are valuable, and that is what Buxton does. We are an answers company, and we provide those answers for you in easily digestible ways via our client services/account teams, our technology or both.
What is the most valuable thing analytics can tell you in the healthcare industry?
First and foremost, it tells you who your consumers are, not just overall, but for each service line. It is more than just standard demographics. It is how they live their lives, how they spend their money, and how they behave as consumers of healthcare. The consumer analytic engine, which is the foundation of our location strategy solution, can help forecast potential new sites for any service line and optimize markets so that you're opening new homerun locations. It can also be utilized to help evaluate the performance of your existing locations to understand which of your locations are underperforming their potential, and which need to be relocated or consolidated. Analytics gives you confidence to know you need to put those sites there, rearrange your positions, and then market to those best potential patients for that service line in that trade area
If you’re not investing in analytics, what are you missing?
Like I have said before, you will not know your patients as consumers. In any environment where there is competition and lots of money to be made, there are going to be winners and losers. The companies who don’t succeed are the ones that don't adopt these types of analytical principles, and don't make them a significant piece of their decision process.
There you go! With these helpful insights from Mr. Stinneford, it clear that analytics can play an important role in a healthcare organization’s success. To gather more information about Buxton’s approach to healthcare analytics and whether it’s the right fit for your organization, visit our healthcare industry page.