Data Silos are Crippling American Healthcare; Why Composable ERPs Are the Cure

With the passage of the HITECH Act in 2009, healthcare providers nationwide began adopting health information technology, including electronic health records (EHR). Patients and practitioners alike have benefited from the digitization of healthcare through more personalized patient care, automation of hospital administrative processes, earlier disease detection and more.

Medical practices’ adherence to the Act, however, created a data deluge. It has been reported that up to 30% of the world’s data is health related. According to the World Economic Forum, hospitals alone generate 50 petabytes of data per year. To put that into perspective, a single petabyte of data is equivalent to 1 million gigabytes.

The Data Downpour Created a Data Silo Crisis

Data often is isolated across health providers’ various internal systems, creating a data silo crisis. Simply put, data silos prevent information sharing, which can result in costly issues for healthcare practices, including:

Inefficient use of labor resources. Here’s a common scenario: In healthcare practices, identical data is input into multiple systems. Information about patient care and billing may be input into an EHR system, only to be extracted, manipulated and then input into the accounting system for financial reporting purposes. This ‘double entry’ of information, a common symptom of data silos, creates duplication of staff efforts. Resources are impaired through extremely inefficient time use and increased labor costs.

In another example, the data input process directs physicians’ focus away from patient care. A July 2021 study published in Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association showed that, for every eight hours of scheduled patient time, ambulatory physicians spend more than five hours on the EHR.

Roadblocks to understanding the practice’s performance. With disconnected systems generating separate, individualized reports, it is nearly impossible to get a comprehensive view of how the practice is performing. Are efforts focused on those that are profitable, allowing the practice to generate capital and grow in ways that would be more beneficial to both physicians and patients? Is high-quality care being efficiently delivered? With siloed data and the lack of system integration, these questions will be hard for any healthcare provider to answer.

To create broad-based performance reports at all, someone at the healthcare practice must manually extract data from each system, then determine what data to use and how best to stitch it together to create a holistic performance dashboard. By the time a report is complete, the information it provides may be weeks old.

Hindrances to patient care. The inability to easily share information between technology systems can impact the quality of care healthcare practices deliver their patients. For example, a physician may not be aware of a patient’s recent hospitalization, resulting in extra testing or a delayed diagnosis.

Data silos can also limit collaboration among practitioners. If a patient is receiving inter-disciplinary care from multiple providers, it is crucial that patient data be easily accessible by multiple care providers.

Audit to Identify Where Data Silos Exist

Even with these data silo challenges, global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company projects that office-based physician practices will grow 5-10% through 2026. 

Optimizing a healthcare practice’s technology systems is key to realizing – and managing – this growth. To not only remain competitive, but also to succeed in the next decade of fast-evolving healthcare, medical practices must consider technology systems and processes differently than they have historically, starting with assessing the state of their systems across the practice, from EHR, enterprise resource planning (ERP), payroll, accounting and others.

They must ask the right questions, including: 

• Which are legacy systems? Do these systems serve the practice’s future needs?
• Which have adequate functionality but lack interoperability?
• Is there data that physicians or practice administrators request that cannot be provided?
• Is similar data inconsistent across departments? 

A thorough audit that includes identifying redundant data and data workflows is the first step to identifying data silos within the healthcare practice.

Adopt a Composable ERP to Cure the Data Silo Crisis

No single technological solution can address all healthcare practices’ administrative needs. Rather, it is imperative to think of technology solutions and applications as an ecosystem, in which two or more technologies work together and are integrated in real time. 

An ecosystem enabled by a composable ERP is the sole cure for the data silo crisis in American healthcare. A composable ERP combines best-in-class, next-generation software modules into a single, tailored solution that integrates all systems and provides data visibility across a healthcare practice. Characterized by its adaptiveness for fast-changing organizational needs, built-in artificial intelligence and accessibility for interactions beyond the browser, a composable ERP unifies an organization’s back-office operations into a single view. Said another way, it provides one dashboard of all the applications and databases within the healthcare practice.

A composable ERP shares information about every stage of care and administration within the practice, from scheduling to EHRs to payroll and billing. It removes the manual work of extracting data from separate systems and analyzing each individual area of the practice. All teams can access the data they need, and practice leaders can make decisions based on complete data visibility. With a composable ERP in place, healthcare providers can centralize tracking, forecast organizational trends and build a technology roadmap that grows and evolves along with the practice.

Starting with a clear understanding of a practice’s current technology capabilities and limitations gleaned from the systems audit, and with goals identified for desired outcomes, practice leaders can take incremental, prioritized steps to achieve full composable ERP adoption. Rarely is the answer to replace all existing technology or invest in all improvements immediately. Understanding the totality of the practice’s technology needs is the first step toward breaking down data silos and creating – in manageable steps – a comprehensive, composable ERP that provides a holistic view of the practice’s performance.

Just as the passage of the HITECH Act launched a new era in healthcare, administering care is once again changing rapidly due to the long-term effects of COVID-19, the rise of virtual care, staffing shortages and other factors. For healthcare practices to thrive during these changing times, data silos must be eliminated through an ecosystem approach to technology. A composable ERP holds the greatest promise for breaking down data silos once and for all and for providing every healthcare practice with the comprehensive information it needs to succeed.