Winning the Healthcare Data Race: A Conversation with Cathryn Connolley

January 6, 2023 |
DeliverHealth
 |
January 6, 2023
DeliverHealth

Healthcare leaders, start your engines! As revenue pressures leave hospitals and health systems sputtering, it’s time for many organizations to take a peek under the hood. You won’t need a set of metric wrenches to improve your financial performance. But you will need the right data.

That’s where Cathryn Connolley-Kluck can help. She’s spent more than 20 years advancing healthcare business strategies, first for Geisinger, then as a consultant for numerous health systems. Now, she’s the President and COO of Doctivity Health. Doctivity is a performance improvement and physician relationship management platform that’s designed to help organizations use data to generate new revenue.

Cathryn knows that healthcare organizations can’t invest in technology, staffing, and other necessities they need to deliver high-quality care if their business engine isn’t running at top speed. So, I asked her to join us on Healthcare: Simplified, the DeliverHealth Podcast. She put on her Mechanix gloves and gave us 12 fast-paced minutes filled with brilliant insights on how to win the data race. Rev it up, Cathryn:

“Everybody is trying to figure out claims [data] and how organizations can use it.”

Cathryn has an interesting take on the current state of Health IT and the Great Data Race. On one hand, she sees a crowded CRM space and a growing need to manage claims in a way that accelerates the revenue cycle. But she also sees something missing from most organization’s data strategies.

“Where I see a lack of focus is on the business side and understanding exactly what is needed from an EHR perspective, a claims perspective, and understanding the referral markets to really be able to drive new patients, drive the business, then improve that revenue,” she says. That’s the problem her team at Doctivity aims to help healthcare organizations solve.

“Software platforms need to become more flexible to be able to ingest the data that’s gonna make it easier for their clients to work with.”

As Cathryn has consulted with multiple health systems and organizations over the past few years, she’s uncovered a common problem. Every organization uses their own EHR. And when other

solutions get added onto the EHR—or when a merger happens—it creates integration problems that can become complex and expensive.

“Oftentimes what we see is that companies have the [EHR] tool, then they engage with a claims vendor on top, and then on top of that will be a CRM or consumer data component,” she says. “[But] the software isn’t flexible.”

Doctivity designed its solution to solve this challenge by making integration simple. “We can ingest any data, we can work with any organization, [and] we offer claims along with our platform,” she says.

“Sometimes is takes six months, and the opportunity has moved or changed.”

While integration concerns stop many healthcare organizations from winning the data race, so too does an inability to make data analysis simple. When this happens, decisions get put off for months, and by the time organizations reach a solution, it’s too late. While Health IT solutions can help close this gap, Cathryn says that what’s also needed is healthcare-specific education in data analytics.

“Data is so important, and [we need to train] data analysts to understand the health care business, understand what those important pieces of data [are, and use them] to quickly pivot and drive action,” she says.

 

It’s time to get down to business.

Listen to Episode 10 in its entirety and you’ll hear Cathryn’s thoughts on why the business of healthcare matters… get her insights on how to solve data gaps… and discover the top Health IT trends she believes are shaping the market right now.

If you like what you hear, subscribe, share, and comment! And, if you want to explore ways that the DeliverHealth Platform can help your hospital, health system, or physician group bridge the mid-revenue cycle and digital health, let’s talk.