Notes from the Field: 7 Questions with Nicole King, MBA, Manager of Practice Analytics at Froedtert & Medical College of WI

“Notes from the Field” is a special newsroom feature highlighting industry professionals working to transform healthcare. In this edition, we spoke with Nicole King, MBA, Manager of Practice Analytics at Froedtert & Medical College of Wisconsin (Froedtert Health). King is also a speaker at the Healthcare Analytics Summit™️ 2024 (HAS^®️). 

1. Tell us about your role.
   
   I currently serve as the Manager of Practice Analytics for Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin Ambulatory Medical Practice, primarily supporting operational partners and leaders across various levels.
   
   
2. What inspired you to pursue a career in healthcare?  
   
   I always knew I wanted to make a difference in people’s lives. My role allows the opportunity to make a positive impact on patients indirectly by providing analytic support to our operational leaders so that real-time decisions can be made as they relate to the care they provide.
   
   
3. What is one thing you’ve learned in the past year?  
   
   Incorporating analytics at the forefront of strategic planning is essential for measuring success and producing optimal outcomes. It is imperative we lean on analytics in the beginning to establish measures and criteria. This helps us stay focused through implementation and stay on task in an objective way.
   
   
4. What do you see as the biggest opportunity to improve healthcare?  
   
   With the enormous amount of data available in today’s environment, there is a significant need for advanced analytics in healthcare now more than ever. Investing in the appropriate resources is essential to accurately provide critical thinking insights in a proactive way so that decisions can be made in real-time to provide the best quality care to patients.
   
   
5. What is the greatest challenge facing healthcare? 
   
   From an analytics perspective, I see our biggest opportunity as also one of our greatest challenges. With so much data available at our fingertips, it is imperative to ensure the right story is being told. The best data can be useless if the story is not communicated accurately. The traditional role of an analyst has had typical responsibilities where the majority of their time (~80 percent) was dedicated to pulling and manipulating data, and ~20 percent of the time was spent conducting the analysis, and this is beginning to flip.
   
   With advanced analytic technical solutions, there is a shift in expectations that analysts spend less time gathering data and the majority of time using critical thinking skills (working top of license) to tell the right story that speaks in the terminology of their customers. In addition to this increased access to data and analytics comes data literacy challenges for those who are not experienced or understand how to use the information at hand. This overwhelming feeling can easily result in analysis paralysis.
    
   
6. How do you envision technology playing a role in addressing this challenge in healthcare?  
   
   We are going to continue to see an influx of the next new, exciting “hot” tool and/or platform that comes out to support analytics, but where I think technology will play the biggest role is the integration of AI into the healthcare space.
   
   
7. What best practices have your team employed over the past year that resulted in meaningful improvement or outcomes (i.e., financial, operational, or clinical)?  
   
   We set up a one-stop-shop analytics solution that automatically pulls data from multiple sources into a single application. The design is tailored with views for all levels of leadership, resulting in increased engagement and improved operational effectiveness. Utilizing the dynamic reporting capabilities with trending comparisons in one view allows for quick insights on KPIs regarding access, patient experience, productivity, utilization, and quality performance.