Data rich, information poor: Why analytics matters to hospices

Changing landscape

Like many of us delivering healthcare in collaboration with the NHS, hospices are experiencing the dilemma of not being an NHS organisation but needing to know our way around the landscape of data as if they are.

Faster Data Flows

For example, programmes such as ‘Faster Data Flows’ designed to provide and share timely data across care providers, Integrated Care Boards (ICB’s) and NHS England to ‘improve the flow and speed of data to support local, system and national decision making’. Quite rightly, hospices are being asked to participate, and it is important that they do, because that’s what it means to be part of the NHS data landscape, and the NHS pays for what it can see.

But this places a burden on hospices to either take on more manual processes and administrative burden, or do the necessary system configuration and data engineering in order to connect in this way. A typical hospice may have one or two analysts, but is unlikely to have the data engineering expertise to hand 

Analysis Paralysis

The good news is that most hospices have now migrated to modern Electronic Patient Record (EPR) systems.  These systems are typically the same as those used within NHS primary and community care, so data is likely to be collected in the same way. In fact, when configured correctly, these systems have potential to hold vast amounts of information concerning every aspect of patient care.  

The tricky part is that it isn’t that easy to get the data out and use it. Using tools like Excel (or even Power BI) is quite rate limiting unless the data has been properly structured outside the EPR. Put simply, the analyst resource available will be used up just trying to maintain relatively small numbers of reports – checking anomalies, trying to cope with changes to the data that break everything – when it should be purely focused on what adds most value – measuring impact, helping people to do their jobs. 

Well, the other good news is that it isn’t that hard to break out of Analysis Paralysis.

Opportunity

So what is the solution? What does exceptional analytics look like? Is it affordable when hospice finances are stretched to, and in some cases beyond, breaking point?

Having invested resources to migrate to modern EPR solutions, analytics is really the icing on the cake and much more achievable than it might appear. The things that get us there are:

• Using a data warehouse to load and ‘transform’ the EPR data in a way that makes it easier for analysts to use and provides a ‘single version of the truth’ – fix the data in one place, rather than in every report and spreadsheet that it gets used in
  
  
• Link in external datasets such as population demographics to better understand how they meet the needs of their community
   
• Make the data securely available throughout the organisation through a business intelligence platform like Power BI, Qlik Sense, or Tableau to provide information to  anyone that has a need – managers, clinicians, directors – with bespoke dashboards and reports that can flex and evolve through time. If the analysts are spending 80% of their time developing new reports rather than on churning out the data, you know you have got it right!
   

Support in transforming analytics

Over the last year we have been working with two hospices that are breaking out of the analysis paralysis – St Gemma’s in Leeds and St Barnabas in Lincolnshire. It is noticeable that both are dealing with very similar challenges, with similar data, and similar ambition. They both understand their own data inside out, so the ask has been to support them on their journey rather than do it for them. And they know exactly what they want: How do we automate our reporting? How do we improve data quality? What does health equity look like? How do we measure our impact? 

With the right foundation in place, hospices can transform their analytics from a necessary burden into a powerful tool that truly serves their mission—improving patient care, demonstrating impact, and securing the future of hospice services in an increasingly data-driven healthcare landscape.