April 23, 2015 •Heather Brotsos
Summit is excited to welcome back Dr. David Butz for a new seminar on healthcare claims and payments on May 5th. We sat down with him to learn some tips for working with health claims data.
Summit: What is the most common data issue that trips people up when working with health claims data?
Dr. Butz: On the spectrum of “big data,” health claims are not especially big. But this industry is very complex, and healthcare payers, providers, and patients are so impressively varied. There is just so much to know! Meanwhile, there is overwhelming pressure on all sides to assemble “boil the ocean” analytics, and the result is mayhem. The most common issue, from my vantage point, is a mentality whereby data scientists presently try to do too much with too little underlying knowledge and rigor around the data themselves. We are the problem!
What advice would you give to someone just getting started with health claims analysis?
Know the data! And make it a priority to know more about the data every day.
If you had the power, what is the one thing you would change to improve health claims data?
Invest modestly in making the raw claims data (even claims pending) available to patients and their caregivers in real time or near real time. If someone using my identity arouses suspicion by using my credit card, the bank calls me within minutes. Health care claims could have that same immediate connectivity, and there is no reasonable excuse for the delays that we presently endure. In the entire health care industry, this would be the surest, quickest, and highest-ROI investment available.
Dr. David Butz received his Ph.D. in Economics in 1985 from Northwestern University. After eight years on the economics faculty at UCLA, he moved to Ann Arbor, MI, where he has served in various capacities on the faculty of the University of Michigan’s Business and Medical Schools. Dr. Butz devotes the bulk of his research effort to the economics of health care delivery.Other research interests lie in health care outcomes research, industrial organization, law and economics, antitrust, and supply chain contracting, where he has published numerous peer-reviewed papers.
Interested in attending the seminar? Registration information below.
