Customer Story

Data Governance Framework Unlocks New Levels of Trust in Company Data

What we did

  • Developed a data strategy which included an iterative plan for implementing data governance.
  • Detailed the necessary components of a data governance framework, including standardized data definitions and data lineage.
  • Identified the key staffing and processes necessary for effective data management.

Industry

  • Healthcare
  • ·
  • Services

Technologies

  • dbt
  • ·
  • Fivetran
  • ·
  • Snowflake

About the Company

This nationwide, for-profit leader in post-acute healthcare offers services such as home health, hospice, personal care, medical home care, and health management to its patients. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, the healthcare provider has more than 31,000 qualified professionals in over 260 locations, serving 31 states, and more than 200,000 patients per year.

Goal

To ensure the consistent delivery of personalized, high-quality care and to retain top talent, the healthcare provider aimed to gain a unified view of their data. They sought to implement a robust data governance program, standardizing guidelines, policies, roles, and processes for effective data management.

Problem

As the company experienced significant growth — driven by additional acquisitions within their personal care services and hospice divisions — they encountered challenges in managing their data and analytics ecosystem. Their complex business setup resulted in data scattered across multiple databases, various Business Intelligence tools, and disparate systems. This inconsistency led different departments and business units to adopt varied data definitions and terms, creating discrepancies in metrics and analysis.

Solution

Analytics8 partnered with the company to develop a comprehensive data strategy, encompassing both a data governance framework and program. The data governance framework included the following key components:

  • Data Governance Program Management: This component facilitated establishment of a team; the drafting of processes, policies, and guidelines; and provided training for data governance initiatives. Specifically:
  • Processes and Roles: We worked with the company to identify the essential people and processes required for effective data management throughout the organization. This involved designating roles for data ownership, data quality management, and data access control.
  • Metadata Management: Central to understanding and supervising data assets, their usage, and associated metadata. Our contributions here were twofold:
  • Standardized Data Definitions: We introduced uniform data definitions to ensure that metrics and KPIs were consistently defined across the company. This eliminated ambiguity and ensured that everyone used terms uniformly, enhancing data accuracy and enabling meaningful comparisons.
  • Data Lineage: We defined the process to maintain data lineage, allowing the company to gain a clear understanding of the end-to-end history of their data. This visibility into data flow ensured data integrity, trustworthiness, and assisted in troubleshooting and problem-solving during analysis.

The Results

Following the implementation of the data governance program, the healthcare provider experienced several positive outcomes:

  • Automated Insights: Standardized data definitions and a unified view of data reduced the team’s manual data manipulation time. This shift allowed them to focus on extracting insights from employee-related data, such as headcount, pay rates, overtime rates, turnover, and retention metrics. These insights improved decision-making in employee hiring, compensation, and retention, ultimately enhancing the quality of care provided to customers.
  • Unified Data: We merged disparate data sources into single, unified tables. The company can now access employee data for the last 13 months across all acquisitions and business units in a coherent and easily accessible format.
  • Trustworthy Data Access: The data lineage provides a clear view of data sources and their relationships, ensuring that users across the organization can access trustworthy and reliable data. Non-data engineering users benefit from this visibility, as they can better understand the data they use in building dashboards and reports.

The data governance framework positions the healthcare provider for continued growth and success as they continue to provide exceptional post-acute healthcare services to their patients and families across the nation.

Rooted in helping individuals, this company provides post-acute healthcare services for more than 200,000 patients, across 31 states, each year. With more than 50 years of industry experience to draw from, the company is focused on reimagining the way care is provided and prioritizing patients and their needs.

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