What is Data Governance in Healthcare?
The data that healthcare organizations hold is incredibly valuable – it’s perhaps the most valuable asset they have. At an individual level, patient data often contains the key to understanding illness and potential recovery. Viewed more broadly, the data associated with a patient’s engagement with a healthcare provider – for example, admissions records and procedures performed – can provide insights into the future strategy of the organization.
As a result, data governance in healthcare is non-negotiable. Data governance is about managing data and processes so data can be used as a consistent, secure and organized asset that meets policies and standards. When data governance is implemented and scaled properly, it can transform healthcare organizations into Data Intelligent enterprise. But without data governance or when data governance is implemented poorly, healthcare organizations struggle to organize and optimize use of their data and ultimately, end up with heavy fines, unhappy clients, and unproductive employees.
Data governance is important for a healthcare organization because these organizations deal with large volumes of sensitive data, are faced with numerous complex regulations, and are typically rather siloed in operation. Data governance helps because healthcare organizations unlock the value of their data so they can use their data to make impactful decisions.
Healthcare organizations hold extremely sensitive information. Organizations need to be vigilant about their data use because consumers have a unique and protective relationship with their health information; in fact, RSA Archer conducted a study on data security and found that 61% of American consumers are concerned about the security of their medical information. As businesses collect more information and consumer concern about data protection grows, data governance in healthcare becomes even more integral. Organizations need to be cognizant of what data they have, where the data is stored, and how it’s used in order to ensure ethical data practices and instill trust in their customers.
Likewise, healthcare organizations operate in a highly regulated industry, which often has standards or regulations around data privacy and data security.
Although the United States enacted the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) back in 1996, organizations continue to experience difficulty complying with the regulation. HIPAA serves as the foundational piece of regulation in the United States for establishing national standards for protecting patients’ health information. Managing the rules and principles of HIPAA and other data protection regulations creates additional complexity for data management and data governance in healthcare organizations.
Healthcare organizations have to worry about more than just industry specific regulations. There are more general rules too – for example, within the European Union (EU) there is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and in the US there is the new California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). In addition to the regulations, healthcare organizations are at an elevated level of risk when it comes to cyber threats. Concerns about risk and compliance can make it daunting to consider more advanced approaches to managing data – will patient data be safe, and will the organization remain compliant?
Another common data governance challenge that is exacerbated in the healthcare industry is the formation of data silos. Usually, patient data sits in individual departments and these departments rarely communicate with each other. This makes it difficult to access data across the organization, causing patients to repeatedly fill out paper forms giving their name, address, and other basic details. Since this information is usually manually imputed, the more times the form is filled out, the more likely human error will occur.
