I have been fascinated with puzzles since my childhood. My grandparents’ house held a menagerie of mysteries, just begging to be solved. Jigsaw puzzles, logic problems, even those “can you spot the difference” images would keep me entertained for hours, which I’m sure was my grandparents’ immediate goal. Puzzling times taught me to see the big picture, even when you don’t quite know all the details and evolved into a passion for using healthcare data to drive organizational improvement.

Let me warn you - healthcare data puzzles rarely play fair. They are notorious for arriving at the party without all their pieces, some forget their boxes, and a very small percentage bring a clear picture of what you’re trying to solve. If you’re like me, those challenges only make data puzzles more enticing. If not, we can buddy up.  

One of my favorite ways to play with data is creating dynamic dashboards that provide real-time insight into existing operations. Tell me a story, provide your problem/goal, give me some data, and my puzzle-solving brain is off and running! You’d probably be surprised how often we gather data pieces in healthcare but don’t link them all together for a more vivid picture. If you don’t already have a good understanding of your operational baseline, you need it. It’s hard to solve puzzles without knowing where to begin.

Let’s start by unwrapping the box and examining the big picture. Does this picture define the problem you’re trying to solve? If starting with a complex puzzle, filled with a seemingly endless number of subprocesses, such as timely hospital patient throughput, it can be easier to break the overall picture it into smaller connected puzzles. Patient leakage, emergency room dwell times, discharge timeliness, and incoming patient transfer times – data’s overall picture can be vast and overwhelming if not properly managed and defined. This step will likely require your analytics and process experts to be tied at the hip, working to develop a clear understanding of where this trail of puzzle pieces fit in the overall picture. Data analytics has rules, and your analysts need to understand the unique business requirements that define your data’s parameters and overall structure. When the right pieces are found they will perfectly align together, and the puzzle you’ve relentlessly been trying to solve finally begins to come into view.

As we lay out all the pieces onto the table and begin to analyze the puzzle and the story it reveals, you’ll likely realize that not all puzzle pieces are created equal. Imagine that you have missing pieces or somehow another puzzle’s piece has mistakenly made its way into the array lying in front of you. I have yet to work on a project where erroneous data didn’t provide my team with at least a moment of confusion. To avoid derailing your puzzle-solving efforts, implement strong processes that will ensure the quality of your puzzle pieces. Data quality issues are one of my biggest pet peeves – bad data --> bad information --> misinformed decisions --> nothing is solved. In finance, our technical term for this is “garbage in, garbage out.” If you have data quality issues, I feel your struggles.  

To me, there’s nothing more rewarding than standing over a completed, picture-perfect puzzle that I’ve spent hours, days, weeks, or even months trying to solve. Now, what should I do with all this hard work I’ve invested into the finished puzzle? I use glue to safeguard the picture, ensure it remains solid. In healthcare, our glue is the process improvement opportunities that we can now see after all the data pieces have been compiled together, providing snapshots and trends that furnish real-time feedback on the successes or (gasp!) failures. The process improvement puzzle is continuous and missteps or backslides are almost guaranteed to rear their head along the way. Although they can be puzzling, you are set up for success. Take them in stride, step up additional controls, and start hunting down your next pieces of

the data puzzle.

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