Types of Data Collection for Healthcare

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Types of Data Collection for Healthcare

In any healthcare organization, data is collected in numerous ways for an ever-increasing number of reasons. Data may be collected by a monitoring device directly connected to the patient, or by providers as they make observations or record treatments. Quality improvement activities often call for data collection where observations of activities, timeliness, or satisfaction indicators are gathered. Data may be abstracted from primary sources and collected for unique reporting requirements, such as specialized registries or claims transactions. With the various types of data collected in many different methods for varied purposes, it is not surprising that data collection may have escaped management in the past.

Why Is It Important?

Data collection should be carefully managed in healthcare organizations. Time spent collecting data can consume huge portions of a provider's day -- taking him or her away from more direct patient care activities. Other employees may spend their entire day collecting data. When you consider the cost of data collection equipment, software, employee time, benefits, and other overhead, the price of data collection can add up quickly. And what are you getting for your money? Is the data collected reliable? Is it comprehensive? Does it provide the necessary detail to answer important clinical and business decisions? For the price your facility is paying, the answers to these questions must be yes.

AHIMA's data quality management model depicts data collection as one of the four primary data functions. The others are application, warehousing, and analysis. All characteristics of data quality management should be applied to data collection ...

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...me, as well as the type of discharge. In order to have them complete the required discharge information, they were trained on the definitions of discharge status in the Uniform Discharge Data Set and instructed on the consequence of data error on payment and outcome reporting.

In order to reduce the data collection time for evaluation of record completion, the director of health information management worked with the operating room staff to capture the results of their preoperative check of record completeness. By improving the data collection tool and standardizing the definitions between the two applications, they were able to concurrently collect information about completeness of history and physicals, preanesthesia assessments, and consent completion -- eliminating a redundant review of information post discharge.

Bibliography:

www.rde.com

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