Analytics: Moving Health Care Forward

Hospital administrators are leading the use of health care analytics for a range of functions in provider settings. Driving their increased use are a few key clinical and business factors: the desire to meet meaningful use requirements, create quality reports, and better capture revenue, according to the results of SearchHealthIT.com's business intelligence survey.

Results are based on 243 responses from CIOs and other senior IT executives at medical centers, health systems and physician practices across the country. The survey was conducted online in August. For the purpose of the questions, business intelligence was defined as analytics used for administrative, back-office functions while clinical data pertained to information found in clinical, patient-facing situations.

Clinical data analytics and business intelligence applications are important to hospitals as they expect to increase some spending in the next two years on new tools for areas such as supply chain management, health information exchange (HIE) and predictive analysis of disease...