"Welcome to our company blog. Within these blog posts, we hope to share our insights on clinical quality management, the patient-centered medical home, chronic disease management in primary care, evidence-based medicine, and the use of technology in ambulatory care settings."

- David Morin, CEO and Donald Nease Jr., MD, Chief Medical Officer

Data is data, right? Facts and figures presented in some manner. More data is always better than less? Larger reports must always tell you more? Many a job has been justified on generating data. There are many to which generating data is the end-goal.

Each of us is drowning in data. And much of it really doesn't help you do what you do better. Shouldn't that be the point of getting data?

Actionable data is data that you can do something with. It answers not just "what" but "why".

An example: your clinical system generates a report that says your compliance rate with a guideline for measuring A1C levels every six months for diabetics is 50%. That tells you, for half your diabetic patients, you are meeting the goals of the guideline.

Cool! Now, you want to get that compliance rate to 60%.

What do you do? All the report tells you is that 50% are in compliance. You have no idea what's going on with the other 50%, you don't even know who they are. Good luck getting your compliance rate higher.

Here comes the need for actionable data! The data you need to get your compliance rate higher includes:

1. A list of the patients not in compliance.
Yep, this certainly is where you'd start, but this alone doesn't tell you why they are not in compliance. And, it needs to be all the patients not in compliance, even those you haven't seen in years.

2. Details as to why they are not complaint (like: have never been seen, have a lab req but never completed it, refused to do it, have not been asked to do it).
Cool. Now we know what to do for each patient. How do we take action to move forward?

3. Contact information for each of these patients.
Use this info for telephone calls, custom letters, emails, text messages, smoke signals, whatever it takes to reach these non-compliant patients and move them to compliance (Note: Cielo Clinic can generate letters and create call lists but cannot yet generate smoke signals). And, because you know the exact reason each patient is not in compliance, you can have directed communication with them to get to their exact needs.

4. Details on the actions you take.
Track the fact you made calls, sent letters, got more lab reqs out, etc… So, as you continue to work with these patients, you know exactly what you've done to be smarter about it next time around.

Got actionable data?

Dave Morin
CEO
Cielo MedSolutions