Although a majority of healthcare leaders believe big data to be important to the future of their business, less than half have seen a return on investment into data analytics, according to a survey from the Society of Actuaries.
While 87 percent of respondents believe big data will have at least some impact on their business, and two-thirds of respondents have high expectations for its potential, 49 percent have not yet seen any direct business benefit from big data. Currently, payers are seeing much more business benefit than providers, with 53 percent of insurance executives reporting achieving substantial business benefit already through big data, compared with 38 percent of providers.
However, just half of those surveyed believe their organization is prepared to fully take advantage of big data, including just 38 percent of hospital and health system executives. A vast majority (84 percent) of all respondents and 79 percent of provider respondents said they have difficulty finding employees with training in advanced data analytics.
To combat the staff shortage, 45 percent of leaders surveyed reported plans to hire at least one additional staff member to manage and analyze large data sets. Providers are generally more anxious to hire than payers, as 35 percent of providers say current staff do not have the capabilities to effectively use big data, compared with 27 percent of payers.
Survey results are based on responses from 156 hospital and health system executives and 102 health insurance executives, collected through an online survey between Oct. 10 and Oct. 16, 2013.
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