We talked with Taffie Majdeski, Director, Executive Partnership Programs & Analytics for Varian’s Advanced Oncology Solutions Professional Services team. She shared her insights on unlocking the power of data analytics to leverage clinic operations, and how sometimes you have to start at the end, to know where to begin.
Q: Why is leveraging data important for an oncology clinic?
A: Varian’s Advanced Oncology Solutions (AOS) Professional Services team works with customers to offer tailored solutions in operations, clinical expertise, implementation, change management, and leadership to address the unique challenges clinics face.
As clinics and hospitals grapple with cost pressures, staffing pressures, and growing patient needs, data is an increasingly powerful tool for understanding the full picture of your practice —clinically, operationally, and financially.
Clinically, tracking metrics such as modality mix, toxicity, or outcomes can help you compare differences in treatment approaches with patient outcomes, potentially identifying ways to improve patient care. Operationally, metrics such as modality used, the number of fractions and toxicities, and outcome results can help you identify which treatments are most effective, with the least amount of toxicity and other costs associated with managing those issues.
Financial data can be powerful for getting a clearer picture of your clinic’s overall performance and help you identify where to target changes to make the biggest impact.For example, many clinics focus on retrospective claims data. They know how much they might get reimbursed for certain services, but not what it costs them to provide it. This is crucial when negotiating contracts with payors.
Once you have a solid program and are collecting accurate, meaningful data, you can use that data to reduce variation, make real-time decisions, and impact the care you provide to your patients. Additionally, you can leverage that data to gain a competitive advantage and negotiate with payors.
Q: What are the challenges to leveraging data in oncology clinics?
A: For many clinics, the biggest challenge is lack of resources. Not all clinics or hospitals have teams who can build reports or dashboards or help with other reporting needs. There may be IT resources, but they often don’t have a clear understanding of the radiation or medical oncology data needs, workflows, or context needed to optimize how to leverage the most value from data.
Fragmented data sources represent another major challenge, both for collection and analytics.Making sure you have a platform that allows you to pull data from multiple sources and someone who can manage it are key.
Another big challenge is making sure you can compare apples to apples. Create templates so that the same data is collected across your operations. Sometimes this requires workflow changes to standardize, so all different clinics or locations are entering data and defining data similarly.
“Once you have a solid program and are collecting accurate, meaningful data, you can use that data to reduce variation, make real-time decisions, and impact the care you provide to your patients.
- Taffie Majdeski, Director, Executive Partnership Programs & Analytics, Varian Advanced Oncology Solutions Professional Services.
Q: Let’s say you want to build a data program. Where should you start?
A: It may seem counter-intuitive, but thinking about the end result can be very helpful to building a successful data program.
By putting thought and intent into your analytics program to understand what you want to achieve, identifying which financial, operational, and clinical key performance indicators (KPIs) you want to measure, you can build and configure your workflows, data entry, and collection to support that end.
For example, reviewing modality mix may help you understand differences in how your clinic is treating different various diseases, based on provider or site, and whether you’re actually coding correctly to recoup the costs for services provided. That data can also help drive better clinical care as you identify and implement best practices.
Understanding the experience for all stakeholders is another important area to consider because it plays an important role in driving other operations. Patients are a core stakeholder group, but it’s important to also consider referring providers, payors, and other departments in the hospital.
Next, decide how to measure. Take an inventory of where your data is kept, including electronic medical records, financial systems, hardware, a hospital system, or even paper. There are many analytics tools and platforms available, so it’s important to choose one that enables you to slice and dice the data to unlock insights that are useful.
For clinics with complex workflows and unique needs that require the freedom to build a custom solution, consider integrating Data as a Service (DaaS). This module is a set of clinically organized data models ready to connect to your existing analytics solution or business intelligence tool of choice.
Q: There’s so much potential data in a clinic, how do you identify which data is most important?
A: Understanding where to focus may be different for each clinic, depending on its challenges and goals. Some may be focused on optimizing workflows, while others want to recoup missed revenue. In many cases, maximizing impact requires looking at a mix of factors.
For one customer, we created dashboards that compared modality mix, and the use of advanced modalities versus traditional external beam. These helped the customer see that one of their sites was treating with advanced modalities, such as stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT), but another was primarily treating with external beam, which was less effective and led to more side effects. The data allowed them to dig into the issues and understand why, and whether it was an equipment issue or physician preference.
For another customer, we created a dashboard to track on-treatment visits (OTV), identifying missed visits or visits that were billed incorrectly. By visualizing that relevant payment and reimbursement information, the customer was able to dig into the root cause of the issues and recoup $34,000 in OTV visits missed from the previous month and prevent similar losses going forward.
Sometimes uncovering opportunities requires several approaches. For one client, we optimized workflows, augmented interoperability, and utilized several dashboards, an effort that resulted in denials plummeting from 7% to 0.06%. Additionally, the customer, which had been meeting weekly to deal with the volume of denials, was able to transition to meeting on an ad-hoc basis throughout the year.
Q: Once you develop a data analytics program, how should you maintain it?
A: Once you decide what and how to measure, make a plan to ensure it will happen. How will data be entered and by whom? Create a workflow to make sure that data is collected and entered in a way you need to deliver a dashboard or report. As you build your system, try sketching it out to think through the possibilities. For example, a dashboard on toxicity might have options to let you filter in several ways, such as by disease, provider, stage, grade, and co-morbidities. Don’t forget to check the data, to make sure it’s accurate.
Implementing a new system can be challenging in a busy clinic. Training the team on new workflows is a key part of success but so is building buy-in by helping teams understand the potential benefits and see results.
As you work with your program, be prepared to change. A data analytics program will need to be revised over time to respond to changes to regulations, payment models, treatment standards, systems upgrades, and even staff changes.
Q: Where else can I get support?
A: We provide a set of services and long-term collaborations that draw on our deep understanding of the complex challenges that clinics are facing. We work with you to build operational plans that empower you for success.
Learn more about professional services offered by Varian’s Advanced Oncology Solutions team.