What is Data Governance?
Data Governance is an organization’s framework to manage data responsibly. It includes all the policies, procedures, and actual business practices that impact the data collected and managed by the organization.
All organizations that have data are responsible for data governance, regardless if they have specific people managing it or not.
Data governance impacts everything from data collection to data integration, data quality, data security, access control and data availability, data/measure definitions, information privacy, reporting (consistency, repeatability, quality), even data decommissioning.
Why is Data Governance important in Healthcare?
The data we collect and use in healthcare is some of the most sensitive and personal information available anywhere. It is therefore even more important that we are exercising the highest levels of care in managing that data, and appropriate data governance is one of the best ways to ensure we are doing this.
Who is responsible for Data Governance in Healthcare?
Although everyone who has access to healthcare data or interacts with patient data has a responsibility to use and safeguard that data appropriately, there are two key parts of data governance that need specific groups of people to take responsibility for them.
Data Owners are responsible for setting the policies around specific types of data, usually related to their area of expertise. For example, the head of Human Resources would normally be the data owner for employee data.
Data Governance Specialists are then responsible for implementing the policies, usually from an IT or an analytics perspective.
When should formal Data Governance be brought into a Healthcare organization?
Ideally, data governance should be considered similar to an audit, compliance, or security role. The earlier a data governance professional can be brought in, the easier it will be find gaps and fix issues. In addition to reducing risks, proper data governance can greatly improve an organization’s data efficiency and effectiveness, in many cases quickly providing a net positive return on investment by speeding up and improving the quality of data used in decision making, and ensuring the quality and repeatability of that data while reducing the amount of work required.
How can you improve Data Governance at your Healthcare organization?
The best and fastest way to start improving data governance at your organization is through a quick assessment of where you are currently on your data governance journey. The following questions do not cover all aspects of data governance, but can help start the assessment process.
- If you get 0-1 TRUE answers, you should contact your local IT or analytics specialist first, unless you are the IT or analytics specialist – in which case you should contact a data governance consultant for a professional assessment.
- If you get 2-5 TRUE answers, you would benefit from a professional assessment, and should contact a data governance consultant for more information.
- If you get 6 or more TRUE answers, your organization has at least a basic data governance program, and I would recommend you reach out to them for more information.
An outside professional assessment is never a bad idea as it can reveal areas for improvement, but a more thorough internal assessment can be done before reaching out.
- This is not the first time I’ve heard of data governance, and I know who to talk to at my organization, if I don’t know the answers to the other questions. TRUE/FALSE
- We have clearly defined policies around appropriate data access for both individual access AND reporting. TRUE/FALSE/DON’T KNOW
- We have a Data Dictionary and/or Data Catalog. TRUE/FALSE/DON’T KNOW
- We have policies labeled as Data Governance or Data Governance-related. TRUE/FALSE/DON’T KNOW
- We have specific people with Data Governance titles/positions. TRUE/FALSE/DON’T KNOW
- We have at least one Data Governance Manager or Director. TRUE/FALSE/DON’T KNOW
- We do not have regular problems with inconsistent reports or data. TRUE/FALSE/DON’T KNOW
- Certain existing reports require approval to access, but it is easy to get if needed. TRUE/FALSE/DON’T KNOW
- It is quick and easy to request and get new reports made. TRUE/FALSE/DON’T KNOW
- If I find a mistake in a report or data, it is easy to get it fixed. TRUE/FALSE/DON’T KNOW
Where can you go for more information?
There are several different organizations that provide Data Governance consulting for healthcare organizations, but we are kind of partial to our own. The Forest and Trees provides healthcare data consulting across the full spectrum of data specialties – especially data governance, but also including data strategy, data engineering, analytics development, data analytics and visualization, and data team development and training. For more information, email kthornton@theforestandtrees.com or call (720) 868-5753.