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Month: July 2021

Nicole Harra Shares Human Resources Efforts

This month HealthAxis is excited to feature Nicole Harra from our Human Resources department. Nicole discusses the strides her department is making to help grow HealthAxis’ people-centric culture. She details daily experiences, upcoming events, and what she values about our company culture.

Tell us about your department.

The Human Resources department supports every individual within the organization. Our team is responsible for the employee life cycle (i.e., talent acquisition, onboarding, training and development, retention, and separation). As the HR Generalist, I am one of five team members. The remaining HR team consists of the HR Director, HR Manager, Talent Acquisition Specialist, Learning and Development Specialist.

What does an average day look like for you / your team? 

The average day is a little different for every team member. However, our work is always interconnected to make HealthAxis the best place to work.

We develop enticing offers, a competitive benefits package, and focus on building an inviting culture to attract top resources to HealthAxis. Our department pulls salary bands for open requisition, evaluates the benefits market annually to ensure we are providing the best offerings, and follows top trends to stay competitive. When we recruit from the talent pool, we look for the best of the best, but most importantly we look for an individual that can identify with our core values and be a great fit for the team/organization.

Our goal is to make the new employee experience as seamless and stress-free as possible. We have developed a comprehensive and inclusive onboarding program to make everyone feel welcomed and empowered. Within the employee journey here at HealthAxis, we are always encouraging growth and development with continuous education, goal setting, and career path development. We retain our top talent by continuously providing employees with the opportunity for advancement.

Are you looking forward to any upcoming events?

To continue making HealthAxis a better place to work, we remain focused on achieving our 2021 goals. One goal we focused on was the development of an employee recognition program. The Core Value Champions Recognition Program launched in June of 2021. Each month two stellar employees are recognized for their contributions and exemplifying one of our seven core values.

I am looking forward to the August Q3 meeting where two Core Value Champion winners will be announced live on our new webinar platform. The new platform allows every attendee to participate with live-action icons. These icons show support and praise for the nominated and Core Value Champion winners.

Are there any new developments in your department or on your team?

Since pivoting from in-office work during the pandemic, our team has been focused on developing our hybrid-work model. An in-house hoteling software is being developed for our physical office space with work-from-home surveys and educational tools released to all employees. As we study the hybrid-work model through data collection and beta testing, we gain valuable insights on what improvements can be made to continually enhance the employee experience at HealthAxis.

What do you value most about our culture at HealthAxis Group?

HealthAxis has a people-centric culture that values the happiness of employees as much as the bottom line. The organization understands it’s the employees who make HealthAxis successful.

Part 2: 3 Keys To Developing A Data Quality Strategy You Can Trust

What good is collecting endless buckets of data if you can’t trust it?

Overcoming skepticism and distrust can only be accomplished through a robust data quality process. Data quality must be at the forefront of any data warehouse and analytics project to guarantee validity and value within the information you receive.

The key is to focus on the three main areas to build a solid data quality best practice standard.

Successful data quality strategies include:

  1. Data Terminology
  2. Data Profiling
  3. Data Governance

Now that we’ve discussed the importance of a sound data governance foundation in part 1 of this series, let’s dive into the importance of data terminology.

Consistent data terminology is critical to building trust and validity in your company’s data and analytics. When data terminology standards are not well thought out, creating one source of truth can be challenging, if not impossible. You cannot compare apples to apples if one set of apples is named bananas.

Standardizing Terms And Definitions Throughout The Healthcare Industry

Having standardized clinical coding standards is crucial for the quality and safety of health service delivery. Most healthcare organizations do not utilize the same business definitions, clinical terminology, or metadata. Meaning the way they refer to health symptoms, diseases, medications, and procedures could be completely different.

It’s vital for patient care and research and development to share data across disparate systems, providers, networks, and applications in a meaningful way. Without data sharing of this magnitude, the healthcare industry will find it hard to evolve into a delivery model based on proactive care management and keeping healthy populations healthy. Without standardized data terminology, the comparisons and analysis are incomplete, misleading, or false.

Data Terminology Best Standards For The Healthcare Industry

The best approach to develop common health terminology is driven through the Data Governance body. Data Governance develops processes and identifies roles that set the corporate direction for setting common health terminology standards. Business plays a substantial role in driving the Data Governance initiative and works collaboratively with IT implementing the specific solutions. There are many sources of government standards to choose from to guide the organization to high-level Master Data Management (MDM). Government mandates like HL-7, EMR, HIPPA, UB forms, and HCFA forms are good sources to begin the conversation around standard definitions and formats to be used throughout the EDW. Based on the direction defined by the Data Governance body, these standards are implemented through the data modeling processes during data acquisition.

When there is trust within data, users have the confidence to take action based on that data. Without it, there is no action and lack of action is death to any analytics solution. A data warehouse and analytics solution are only as good as the actions they evoke. Data terminology standardization across data submissions is paramount in developing your data quality strategy.

The final blog will dive into best practice standards for data profiling to strengthen your data quality strategy.