The Exponential Value of Data Accessibility in Healthcare

The healthcare industry is one of the largest economic sectors in the United States, employing one out of every eight Americans and accounting for an estimated $4 trillion in spending in 2020—approximately one-sixth of the U.S. GDP. Healthcare is the single largest line item spend for many states and most employers.

Unfortunately, the size of the market is rivaled only by its inefficiency and lack of unity and coordination between the many different stakeholders a patient might encounter during the course of a healthcare interaction.

Each of these stakeholders—doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, medical device manufacturers, etc.—collect various types of healthcare data about the patient, the processes, and the financial data that follows.

However, rather than working together in a coordinated manner, each stakeholder has systems that collect data in a way that is oriented towards their own self-interest, which results in data silos in healthcare that are detrimental not only for the patient, but for all stakeholders involved. Lack of access to healthcare data can lead to increased administrative costs for healthcare providers, frustration and inconvenience for patients, and the potential for costly, even deadly, errors.

So how do we fix the fragmented, inefficient nature of healthcare data? The solution is improving data accessibility in healthcare by streamlining the data collection process and re-orienting it to focus on the well-being of the patient.

Patient-Centric Data Accessibility in Healthcare

To address this serious issue, progressive, patient-centric companies like PRIA Healthcare are implementing platform strategies to help streamline access to healthcare data. These solutions are based on patient value—the specific benefits to the patient offered by a healthcare treatment, procedure, medication, or device.

These centralized platforms allow healthcare stakeholders to share tools and data, including analytics that reveal insights to inform future actions, and optimized processes that remove inefficiencies and smooth workflows.

Admittedly, re-orienting healthcare data access to focus on patient value is a serious undertaking in an industry as huge and complicated as healthcare, but the payoffs are worth it. At the end of the day, if data collection and access is oriented toward better health for the patient, all stakeholders in the healthcare system win.