How can data support clinical and operational decision-making? This question is at the forefront of healthcare leaders’ and clinician’s minds, as more providers onboard new digital technologies in the advent of COVID-19. Healthcare analytics is booming as the industry mines data collected from a range of platforms to increase safety for staff and patients, improve care outcomes and ultimately save time and money.

When it comes to such a prevalent and subjective condition such as pain, data is even more critical. Up to 80% of residents in aged care experience chronic pain, and more than half of all aged care residents live with dementia, which significantly limits their ability to reliably self-report pain. Research has shown that pain can lead to an increase in problematic behaviours and reduced quality of life. Yet despite this, accurately quantifying and effectively treating pain continues to pose an ongoing challenge for health professionals.

This presentation will demonstrate how Residential Aged Care leaders and clinicians harness data analytics to inform clinical judgments for residents in pain. Using insights gathered from over 150,000 pain assessments across facilities in Australia, we reveal how Aged Care leaders and clinicians utilise data to uncover trends in pain assessment delivery, track pain levels over time, flag pain outcomes and risks, and identify potential linkages to clinical data sources such as medication management and treatment.