Clinical Data Abstraction Is Key to Better Patient Outcomes

Is your organization looking for ways to improve its patient care and health outcomes? Clinical data abstraction is a main driver to accomplish both. Here are the reasons why, and what options are available to your team if you aren’t able to manage this service internally.

Abstraction Benefits Clinical Review

If you’re interested in identifying trends of disease, analyzing costs for the medical procedures that you provide, reducing mortality rates, or ranking physician performance, then clinical data abstraction should be of value to you. Abstractors can identify, input, and analyze key data points for each of these areas to allow clinical teams to understand how they can improve.

Clinical Data Abstraction Corrects Errors During EHR Migration

If you are one of the several healthcare organizations that had intentions of changing their EHR vendor during the past few years, you may have experienced some form of data transfer issue. Unfortunately, these types of implementations run the risk of clinical information not being fully or accurately transferred, thereby leaving the onus on clinical teams to locate these errors and correct them.

Abstractors have the skill sets and meticulous attention to detail that are required for this manual work, and can assist your internal teams with reviewing their data. The less time that physicians, nurses, and other clinical staff have to spend combing through EHRs, the more time they can spend focusing on patient care.

Clinical Data Abstraction Prepares You for Audits

Audits are an essential component for healthcare compliance, and they rely on the accuracy and completeness of your data. Abstractors can ensure that your records are updated and organized appropriately so that you meet all requirements under HIPAA and any additional regulatory standards.

This allows your organization and its staff to remain accountable, while protecting patient care and avoiding potential damages to your reputation and revenue.

Why Outsource Your Clinical Data Abstraction?

The reason for outsourcing abstraction comes down to your available resources. More often than not, healthcare providers and organizations put more emphasis on maintaining their compliance than they do with innovating their services. As we noted above, this makes sense — especially considering how devastating noncompliance can be. But we’ve also noticed how care often cannot improve when innovation continues to stagnate. 

As healthcare costs rise, the time and effort that are required to internally hire, train, and compensate abstractors may be more than your budget permits, leaving outsourcing a more viable and cost-effective solution.

Why Choose HCRS for Data Abstraction?

Outsourcing this service to HCRS will give you immediate access to a team of certified abstractors and coders who are ready to take on the challenges of reviewing your data and gleaning relevant information.

We offer two types of abstraction: core measures and medical records.

Core measures abstraction involves the review of clinical data as it pertains to national standards of care for the purpose of understanding what care was performed and under what circumstances.

Medical records abstraction gives providers an overview of key metrics that can improve patient care and avoid readmissions.

Are You Ready to Discuss a Program?

Regardless of the type of data management needs that you have, we’re ready to assist. Contact us to learn more about a program for clinical data abstraction, medical coding, auditing, or cyber defense.