New Survey of Senior Healthcare Execs Finds Unstructured Data as an Obstacle to Interoperability

Feb. 13, 2019
A new survey of healthcare executives finds that managing unstructured data is a key obstacle to optimizing clinical workflows in patient care organizations

A survey released on Wednesday, Feb. 13, during HIMSS19, which is being held at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, finds that, while senior leaders in patient care organizations see the optimization of clinical workflows as their top interoperability-related goal, a majority see the inability to effectively manage unstructured data as a key obstacle to achieving that goal.

The survey, conducted by HIMSS Media for Hyland Healthcare, found that 68 percent of senior executives in patient care organization executives cited clinician workflow optimization as their top interoperability goal; but 56 percent found the inability to effectively manage unstructured data as a key obstacle in that area. More than 145 healthcare professionals representing IT, business and clinical roles within provider organizations responded to the survey.

According to the report, an average of 66 percent of the unstructured data in healthcare enterprises is inaccessible/unavailable for patient care decisions. Other key findings from the survey include:

Ø 78 percent of IT/technology leaders report their interoperability efforts are excellent or good, but only 48 percent of clinicians feel the same

Ø  Only one-third  of all respondents report the highest level of interoperability with two or more systems exchanging, interpreting and using exchanged data

Ø  68 percent of respondents say integrating new solutions with legacy systems is a key barrier to interoperability

“Hyland Healthcare is focused on creating a truly connected care experience for patients and providers, delivering the right information to the right people when and where they need it. Interoperability is key to achieving that goal, so this survey provides critical information on the challenges we can address with our customers,” said Susan deCathelineau, vice president, global healthcare sales and services at Hyland. “Our focus is to provide healthcare enterprises with a complete suite of content services and enterprise imaging tools to address all their unstructured content needs. The data in this report proves just how vital this effort is to achieving true health IT interoperability. We’ll use this insight to further improve our solutions to facilitate more informed clinical and operational decisions, improve patient outcomes and optimize customers’ existing technology investments.”

In order, the top interoperability goals cited by executives responding to the survey were: “optimizing clinical workflows” (68 percent); “improve communication/coordination of care” (61 percent); “meet regulatory compliance requirements” (59 percent); “improve patient satisfaction” (54 percent); and “empower employees to make faster decisions” (45 percent).

More details from the survey can be found in this infographic.

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