Introduction by Leonard George, CEO Azulity
In this ‘Expert Insights’ edition, it gives me great pleasure to introduce one of our resident experts in the field of Master Data Management (MDM), and in particular, Provider Master Data Management in Healthcare – Brigitte Workman.


Brigitte is the recipient of the 2018 HCPro Credentialing Resource Center Case Study Award for MDM excellence. She is a Gartner “Top Quadrant” MDM Healthcare business partner. She brings over 20 years of experience advising C-Suite executives regarding the alignment of technology and organizational incentives and guides on-the-ground execution of large-scale technology initiatives.
Here, Brigitte shares some of the benefits Provider Master Data Management offers for health systems and provider networks. She also provides guidance on how health systems can overcome some common data-related challenges through effective Provider MDM solutions.
Provider MDM is changing the face of healthcare in the United States. Here’s how, by Brigitte Workman.
How Do You Know When You Need Master Data?
I had just completed my case presentation on Provider Master Data Management (MDM) at a conference for medical professionals. A well-suited executive came up to me and asked,
“Our mergers and acquisitions are moving at a rapid pace; the other teams can’t keep up. Can Master data help?”
It got me thinking about other healthcare executives across the country trying to figure out the right tipping point at which their organization may need a provider MDM solution.
I answered the executive’s question by posing just two simple questions:
1. Do you have several Provider Credentialing teams?
2. Is your medical staff data separate from your payer data (i.e., not fully integrated)?
If the answer is “Yes” to any of the above questions, you may want to look into what Provider MDM can offer.
Provider Master Data Management or MDM simply refers to the processes, services, and technology in place to manage your critical provider data.
Most providers find the process frustrating. Oftentimes, a lengthy and cumbersome onboarding process can lead to delayed revenue streams.
During the transition, apart from the providers themselves, it can be an unsatisfactory experience while delivering essential data to downstream systems in a timely manner. This includes pushing provider data to external business partners, regulatory and compliance reporting organizations, web directories (Find-a-doc services), networks, and more.
These issues are compounded by the sheer volume of provider data that large networks now have to balance, maintain, and update regularly. This is in addition to the increasing number of regulatory reporting requirements, exclusions, and now, preclusions too.
Health systems can significantly reduce costs and improve efficiencies by establishing and maintaining a Master Data Management (MDM) solution for their provider data.
This ensures consistent high-quality data, fewer errors, and the automation of many tasks that otherwise cause delays across the system.
By implementing a system-wide Provider MDM solution, organizations can integrate and streamline data from top-tier medical staff credentialing applications, EMRs, CRMs, ERPs, reference sources, and much more. Clinician directories that are otherwise fragmented across divisions can be unified as well.
There is growing demand for Provider MDM for health systems around the country due to the many advantages it offers, such as:
LOWERING COST AND TIME FOR NEW PROVIDER ON-BOARDING
$7,000 per day.This is the average cost of onboarding new providers to health systems. It can be time-consuming, often extending beyond 90 days, and takes the efforts of several cross-functional resources working together. There are many manual steps involved. These steps are accompanied by constant communication with external entities in an effort to share and validate professional data related to a provider’s education, work experience, and training. This data must then be verified by approved sources. This entire process is known as Provider Credentialing.
IMPROVING REPORTING AND BUSINESS ANALYTICS
For healthcare executives running large-scale enterprises, there is an enormous amount of data that flows within the organization and is exchanged externally to insurance providers and third parties. Additionally, when healthcare organizations work with external reference data, it adds another layer of complexity. Over the past three years, acquisitions and organizational growth have become more commonplace in this industry. Organizations struggle to integrate health systems that may be working with legacy systems.
As organizations continue to grow rapidly, groups within the organization must leverage data for their business analytics needs. Effective business analytics within an organization can help reduce operational costs, uncover new opportunities for growth, and facilitate better provider and patient experiences.
A direct consequence of a greater focus on data analytics is that the IT team begins to experience a large volume of custom reporting requests from various groups in the organization. For example, the Clinical Analytics and Reporting, Identity and Access Management, and Claims Management teams may all require data related to their separate analytical needs. Detailed reports for each team will contain varied fields that are individually structured can create challenges. Without proper data governance and a master data management structure in place, the lead time to meet the analytics requirements of business users increases significantly.
If the core data has missing fields, duplicate entries, or other issues, any business insights obtained from it are also flawed and potentially unreliable for business decision-making.
A master data management solution can increase the quality of data. It also makes data available immediately to Business Intelligence applications.
Other teams can then use the master data for predictive analytics, blockchain, and other modern technologies. This data works as a backbone for reporting and helps streamline the rest of the reporting requests, reducing the number of duplicate requests. Having a strong Reference Data Architecture with your Provider MDM solution also aids in managing the complexity of the data better.