By John Torontow, Medical Advisor, Zus Health
LinkedIn: John Torontow
LinkedIn: Zus Health
Physicians are trained to be questioners, seekers, and skeptics.
This is usually a good thing, as skeptics tend not to accept the first or most obvious answer. And when their doctors are inspired to dig deeper, patients tend to feel like they’ve got someone on their side who really cares.
But in a data-rich healthcare system, that instinct is starting to backfire. When data contradicts clinical intuition, it’s often dismissed as “wrong.”
The problem? The data usually isn’t the issue. Is it sometimes messy and disorganized? Without a doubt. But as imperfect as it may be, data remains an uncomfortable but essential source of truth.
Which is why healthcare leaders need to shift their focus from data skepticism to data improvement in order to deliver better value-based care.
The Disconnect: Why Physicians Don’t Trust Healthcare Data
Data doubt is an occupational hazard that afflicts many physicians, thanks in part to:
- Cultural bias and overconfidence: People tend to have greater belief in their personal judgment over external inputs.
- All-or-nothing thinking: Any perceived data inconsistency or error undermines all or most of any dataset.
- “Seen = true” bias: Doctors, like many people, tend to prefer their own firsthand experience over claims or external records.
What’s true across all of these factors is that the underlying distrust is driven more by mindset than by data quality. And it’s why physicians need to adopt a value-based care version of the serenity prayer, to accept the things they cannot control and move on.
For example, a doctor gets a claim for a patient with heart failure. But they’ve seen this patient before and didn’t think they had heart failure. Now what? Rather than dismiss that data out of hand, it’s time to evaluate further and see what the problem really is.
Maybe there was a problem with how that data made its way through the system. Or maybe the patient’s condition has changed since their last visit. The only way to know for sure is to continue to treat the patient, drill down to the truth of the situation, and determine the best path forward.
The Reality: Why Imperfect Data Still Matters in Value-Based Care
The problem is that in today’s healthcare data ecosystem, multiple “truths” exist. And depending on one’s viewpoint, the real truth lies in either the clinical records or the claims data (which drive reimbursement).
These are the kinds of imperfections and inconsistencies that drive skepticism, and they stem from a number of factors, including:
- Incomplete documentation
- Coding and billing incentives
- Fragmented care systems
Despite these potential errors and inconsistencies, however, one fact remains. Dismissing data doesn’t eliminate the underlying patient reality. It just obscures it.
The Move: How to Build Trust in Healthcare Data Systems
If the data is imperfect and the systems filtering and disseminating that data are fragmented, how should a physician react to what they’re seeing, especially when it contradicts what they believe to be true?
The answer lies in adopting a new mindset: Accept the data, then question it.
It’s easier said than done, particularly for a skeptic. But healthcare leaders can help tremendously by reconfiguring their systems to focus on practical enablers such as:
- Provenance: Give doctors a clear idea of where the data is coming from.
- Transparency: Make it easy to trace data back to source documents.
- Summarization: Use AI to transform large, unwieldy datasets into something more digestible and useful.
- Unification: Work toward a common record that helps reduce fragmentation and delivers a more complete patient picture.
Perfection is an admirable goal, though not terribly realistic. The goal instead should be to build trust through greater visibility and usability.
Better Engagement with Data = Better Patient Care
Shifting from a stance of perceived certainty to one of probability and curiosity is not an easy thing to do.
But by helping physicians embrace rather than dismiss data, healthcare leaders can help cultivate a system where care becomes more proactive, gaps are identified sooner, and patient outcomes and financial performance both improve.
Trust is the key. Physicians will embrace data when they have faith that it will lead to a better course of care for their patients. And in doing so, they’ll move beyond relying on instinct and learn to engage with the full picture that data can provide.