"Data-driven insight" is becoming a driver of operational efficiency for payers, providers, and other healthcare stakeholders. But in most cases, the available data is limited to an individual organization or a region. What happens if we scale up the amount of data available for analysis by sourcing from across the country and from all major types of care and delivery models?

On today’s show, Tim Suther, Senior Vice President of Data Solutions at Change Healthcare, discusses how this economic healthcare data can be used to help improve the efficiency of the entire healthcare system, as well as the performance of individual organizations. As Tim says, “If you don’t have real-world healthcare data, then you just have an opinion.”

Here's what we talked about on today's show: 

• Importance of unbiased, independent data collection and analysis
• Improving the cost-effectiveness of healthcare with data analytics
• Shifting the national focus from care coordination to the healthcare system
• Improving outcomes, optimizing performance, and accelerating innovation
• Impact of data analytics on payers, providers, policy makers, and consumers
• Taking healthcare’s daily economic pulse via a substantial volume of claims data
• Aggregating simplified claims data across the healthcare industry
• What is the process of deidentifying healthcare data, and how is it regulated?
• Controlling/permissioning the uses of healthcare data
• Data delivery models: structured reports, custom reports, and hosted services
• Measuring utilization and population health across local, regional, and national markets
• Moving beyond performance improvement to true benchmarking
• Price transparency and shopping for care by cost, experience, and quality
• Achieving the triple aim through healthcare consumption data
• Policy uses of comparing a community’s healthcare profile with national trends
• Using data for real-world evidence and health economic outcomes research
• Giving payers visibility into all dimensions, geographies, and specialties
• Deidentified data and the push to curb wasteful spending
• Principles for the ethical application of real-world data
• Advice for beginners: goals to consider

Episode Resources

1. Tim Suther's bio
2. Why the Healthcare Crisis is Really an Information Problem
3. Data Solution website

Show Resources

• SUBSCRIBE to the podcast using any podcatcher or RSS reader
• Download the audio and listen offline
• Get the iOS app
• Get the Android app
• Suggest or become a guest
• Contact Change Healthcare