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Can business intelligence save health care?
- TAGS:Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, business intelligence, health care, Insider Content, predictive analytics
- IT TOPICS:Enterprise Apps, Healthcare IT
Swati Abbott wants to use predictive analytics to save the Blue Cross/Blue Shield companies a whole lot of money on health care claims -- and improve patient outcomes. But will health care providers go along?
During a presentation at the BI & Analytics Perspectives conference this week, the CEO of Blue Health Intelligence said her business unit in the Blue Cross/Blue Shield Association is using predictive analytics to examine more than 110 million claims from the association's 39 affiliated insurers in an effort to anticipate and prevent large health care expenses before they occur. Analytics can show, for example, not just which patients are likely to need expensive health care services but what sorts of interventions could head off those spiraling health care costs.
Armed with that information, the Blue Cross insurance companies hope to convince health care providers to take specific actions that analytic models show can improve outcomes. "Health care is way behind in analytics because of the complexity of the data," she said. "Now we're moving ahead."
There's just one problem: Health care providers don't exactly view insurers as business partners, they don't want to be told how to do their jobs, and doctors haven't exactly embraced data-driven decision-making when it comes to patient care.
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