Most health execs don’t trust hospital data to inform their strategic decisions

The news: Only 20% of healthcare execs fully trust the quality of their electronic health record (EHR) data to drive strategic clinical and operational priorities, despite widespread adoption of EHRs, per a Sage Growth Partners and InterSystems survey of 100 healthcare organization executives.

How we got here: Most hospitals are working with EHR giants like Epic to store and analyze patient data, but research indicates the tech often falls short in terms of accuracy.

• Epic remains king of the EHR market. It holds the greatest hospital market share (31%), compared with Cerner (27%) and Meditech (16%), per KLAS.
• However, Epic’s tech isn’t always trustworthy. Hospitals like University of Michigan Medicine reported Epic’s sepsis algorithm only performed at an overall accuracy rate of 63%, often creating false alarms for physicians.

This makes it difficult for healthcare execs to make quick pivots to improve their hospitals’ operations, and we’re seeing that uncomfortability and lack of trust in their responses to the recent Sage Growth Partners Survey.

• About 43% of C-suite leaders say poor data quality leads to the inability to make timely decisions, per Sage Growth Partners.

The bigger picture: Many health systems are bypassing legacy EHRs and partnering with entrants to get access to higher-quality, more reliable data.

For example, in July, healthcare data analytics startup Truveta Health scored $95 million in funding and added three health system partners to its roster of clients that includes Providence, Henry Ford Health System, and Northwell Health.

• Truveta is helping hospitals extract reliable insights from patient data to improve existing treatments and boost revenues.
• Plus, Truveta has a deal with cloud vendor Microsoft Azure, which makes it easier to sift through patient data—something that is difficult to do with clunky EHR systems.

It’s likely health systems will turn to solutions like Truveta Health and Graphite Health, as these tools will help organizations improve their patient care analyses and optimize decision-making:

• About 80% of healthcare execs indicate creating and sharing high-quality data across their organizations is a top strategic priority for analytics in the next 12 months.