Hospitals Are Drowning in Data—Here Are 5 Features Your Analytics Platform Needs

Hospital administrators and clinical leaders are under immense pressure to improve cost efficiency and operational performance. Yet, they’re often drowning in data with little to show for it.

The numbers speak for themselves—91% of hospital finance leaders admit their organizations could better utilize financial and operational data for strategic decision-making. And the challenges are very real and growing: soaring surgical supply costs (even more so now with looming tariffs on medical equipment), underutilized operating rooms, and revenue loss due to coding errors – just to name a few.

These issues not only squeeze already thin margins but also frustrate both physicians and executives. Meanwhile, hospitals generate staggering amounts of data—an estimated 50 petabytes per year—yet 97% of it goes unused.

Why Hospitals Struggle to Utilize Their Data Effectively

A big reason why hospitals struggle to use their data effectively? Most of this data is unstructured—roughly 80%. Simply put, unstructured data is the kind of data that doesn’t fit neatly into rows and columns, but still holds valuable insights.

In other words, it’s not a simple task to utilize this data. You can’t easily build an in-house tool or just drop an LLM on your EHR and expect to get meaningful or actionable insights. It requires a more specialized approach. As a result, valuable insights remain buried, and hospitals continue to struggle turning information into impact.

This is one of the biggest reasons hospitals, ASCs, and health system customers work with Avant-garde Health – we help them employ a structured AI strategy to effectively clean and process unstructured healthcare data. Then we help them use this data effectively to get better insights which leads to improved decisions, greater cost savings, and increased revenue.

Let’s jump in and look at the top 5 Avant-garde Health features that you can use to help your hospital or health system get the most out of their data!

Feature 1: Advanced Insights & AI-Powered Decision Support

As we mentioned above, hospitals sit on mountains of data including:

• EHR records
• Cost reports
• Supply lists
• Scheduling data
• Op Notes

However, making this data consumable and actionable is not a simple task. Traditional systems often offer plenty of reports, yet executives and clinicians still struggle to pinpoint what actions to take.

It’s not for lack of data; it’s the lack of actionable insights.

The result?

• Important performance indicators get lost in static spreadsheets or buried in IT systems that busy staff don’t have time to dissect.
• Missed opportunities to reduce costs or improve care.
• And a feeling that despite all the dashboards, it’s hard to see the forest for the trees.

Avant-garde – Better Insights for Hospitals Using AI

That’s what makes the Avant-garde Health AI-powered decision support such a powerful feature. Instead of overwhelming users with raw data, it easily sifts through the mountain of different data sources for your hospital, health system, or ASC and highlights where the biggest impact can be made.

Additionally, it follows up with something uniquely powerful. It delivers a detailed, step-by-step roadmap for acting on those insights alongside clinical literature to support recommendations, data on clinical appropriateness, and outcome metrics that ensure quality is never compromised.

The result is a clear, evidence-backed action plan that administrators and physicians can confidently implement to drive both cost savings and improved patient outcomes.

For example, the system might alert a perioperative director that a certain surgeon’s cases consistently run longer than peers or flag that one type of implant is driving up orthopedic surgery costs. But more importantly, it also shows how to address those findings, providing structured guidance on implementation strategies, performance benchmarks, and relevant peer comparisons.

As one orthopedic service line leader put it, “There is no other company like them in their ability to robustly examine care delivery and identify how we can do better in a way that resonates with our surgeons.”

Learn how one of the nation's leading hospitals is saving $5,900 per case.

Feature 2: Quality Benchmarking & Cost Transparency

Every hospital executive knows you can’t manage what you can’t measure – and the measurements have often been woefully inadequate when it comes to costs. Without granular data and quality benchmarking to compare, hospitals, ASCs, and health systems are flying blind on questions like:

• Are our surgeons using more expensive supplies than our peers?
• Why does Procedure A cost $2,000 more at our hospital than at the hospital across town?
• Why does Surgeon A cost 60% more than Surgeon B for the same procedure at the same hospital?

Traditional analytics tools may provide a high-level cost per case, but they seldom offer detailed insights at the physician or item level. This lack of transparency hinders the identification of outliers and best practices.

For instance, surgical supplies often account for about 15% of a hospital’s total operating costs. Within that category, physician preference items- such as the implants, devices, and tools chosen by surgeons- can vary dramatically. Studies show these preference items account for 40–60% of total supply costs. Consequently, there is substantial variation, revealing significant cost differences per procedure among surgeons, sometimes equating to hundreds of thousands of dollars in opportunity costs over a year.

If one surgeon insists on a premium implant that costs twice as much, hospital leadership needs to know. Yet many legacy systems and basic cost accounting reports don’t illuminate these details or benchmark them against others.

Take a Closer Look at Any Level (Physician, Procedure, Department, etc.)

Avant-garde Health’s CareMeasurement benchmarking and deep exploration provides leadership and physicians with the transparency and apples-to-apples comparisons they need to make informed decisions.

The CareMeasurement product enables hospitals to compare physician performance and procedural costs across procedures, physicians, and departments at a granular level. Administrators can see, for example, the exact supply cost for a knee replacement for each surgeon, alongside benchmarks from peer institutions and national data. They can break down a procedure’s cost into components – supplies, implants, specific medications, OR time, length of stay, labor, and more – exposing exactly where one team is spending more than another.

This level of detail empowers constructive conversations: a department chief can approach a surgeon not just with a generic “your cases are expensive” but with specific data (e.g., “your hip surgery supply costs are 10% above benchmark because of the brand of implant used”).

Such transparency engages physicians in cost reduction, especially when coupled with quality outcomes data to ensure cost cuts don’t harm care. Leaders can identify outliers and highlight best-in-class performers to spread their practices.

Feature 3: Surgical Case Cost Optimization & OR Efficiency

The operating room is the financial engine of most hospitals – but it’s also one of the most expensive and complex areas to manage. Wasted OR time, inefficient case scheduling, and unmanaged surgical supply costs can drain resources.

Consider that a single minute in the OR can cost anywhere from $22 to $133 for the hospital when you factor in staffing, equipment, and overhead. Delays in start times, longer-than-expected turnovers, or slow procedures aren’t just minor hiccups; over time they can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost throughput and added expense.

Furthermore, surgical cases often have hidden variability – one surgeon’s hernia repair might routinely use $500 more in supplies than another’s, or one orthopedic team might average an hour longer per joint replacement. These inefficiencies add up. Busy perioperative directors often know there’s room to improve (e.g. cutting a 10% idle gap between cases, or standardizing instrument trays to reduce waste) but lack the precise data or insight to drive change.

Without a smart tool to pinpoint where the bottlenecks and waste are, hospitals end up accepting these costs as the status quo.

It’s no surprise many organizations find themselves asking, “Why do our surgeries cost so much, and how can we safely reduce that?” – yet the answers remain elusive in traditional reports.

Hospitals Get Complete Cost Visibility

Avant-garde Health’s platform zeroes in on surgical case cost optimization and OR efficiency, providing the kind of x-ray vision that perioperative leaders have long needed.

Utilizing advanced analytics, it provides a detailed breakdown of the cost of each surgical case – from the moment a patient enters the OR to when they exit. It considers staff time, OR time, supplies used (down to each gauze and implant), and even downstream costs such as recovery room time or length of stay. With this information, we can identify specific opportunities to minimize waste or variability.

For example, the system might reveal that on Thursdays, first-case start times in Orthopedics average 15 minutes late (perhaps due to a recurring scheduling issue) – a fixable problem once illuminated. Or it may show that Surgeon X uses an expensive suture kit that adds $200 per case compared to peers, highlighting an opportunity to switch to an equivalent, cheaper product.

What sets these insights apart is not just their timely delivery, but the fact that they come with a step-by-step action plan — a playbook that clearly maps out how to address each opportunity. Instead of waiting months for a retrospective report, hospital leaders can act immediately, armed with concrete next steps to drive measurable change this week, this quarter, or even today.

One final note: the platform is designed to balance cost with quality. It doesn’t solely consider dollars; it integrates every insight with patient outcomes. For instance, if shorter surgery times correlate with better results, that’s included in the analysis. Conversely, if a more affordable product adversely affects recovery, that’s noted as well. The aim is to provide high-value care, not merely lower-cost care.

And when hospitals act on these insights, the impact can be significant.

One leading hospital using Avant-garde’s platform saw:

• $5,900 saved per surgical case
• 10% reduction in surgical supply costs
• 44% shorter patient stays

By refining their joint replacement protocol—cutting unnecessary supply use, reducing OR time—they not only saved money but also got patients home faster.

The takeaway? Cost savings and better care aren’t mutually exclusive. When hospitals have the right tools and data, they can make smarter decisions that benefit both the bottom line and the patient.

Feature 4: Site of Service & Contribution Margin Analysis

In today’s healthcare landscape, where a procedure is performed can be just as important to the bottom line as how it’s performed. Hospitals now juggle inpatient surgeries, hospital outpatient procedures, ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), and more – each with different reimbursement rates and cost structures. Many systems lack a clear view of which site of service is truly most profitable or efficient for each type of procedure.

For example, a routine knee arthroscopy might be done in the main hospital OR at an outpatient surgery center. The charges and costs differ drastically: on average, the same service performed in a hospital outpatient department incurs payments about 145% higher than if done in a physician’s office setting.

While higher payment sounds good, the hospital’s costs might also be higher – and payers are increasingly pushing for “site-neutral” payment policies that reduce hospital reimbursement for clinic-outpatient cases. The complexity means that decisions about where to steer cases (inpatient vs. outpatient) can make or lose millions.

Yet many hospitals rely on guesswork or siloed data. Standard EHR or ERP systems don’t automatically calculate contribution margin by site of care. A CFO might know overall surgical margin is 10%, but not realize that inpatient knee surgeries are losing money while outpatient ones are profitable (or vice versa).

With the industry trend of shifting profitable elective cases to outpatient settings, hospitals risk losing revenue if they don’t adapt. The pain point is clear: without detailed site-of-service analysis, health systems can’t optimize their procedure mix for both patient outcomes and financial health.

Making More Informed Decisions to Improve Margins for Your Hospital or Health System

Avant-garde Health’s CareMeasurement product offers a unique ability to perform direct contribution margin analysis for each site of service. It pulls together cost and revenue data across inpatient, outpatient, and ambulatory settings to show a true apples-to-apples comparison. Hospital leaders can see the net margin in the inpatient setting versus the outpatient or ASC setting for any given procedure or service line. This includes all the nuances – facility fees, physician payments, supply and labor costs, and even downstream post-acute costs, if applicable.

The platform’s AI then highlights opportunities. For instance, it might identify that a specific low-acuity surgery currently performed inpatient could be shifted to the outpatient surgery center, where it would consume fewer resources and still receive a reasonable reimbursement, thereby increasing the margin per case. Conversely, it might show that a particular procedure performed at an outpatient center is barely breaking even due to a high supply cost that isn’t fully covered by the lower outpatient payment, suggesting that those cases would be better kept in-house or renegotiated with payers.

By quantifying these scenarios, Avant-garde helps hospitals make data-driven decisions about case distribution. It answers strategic questions like, “Should we invest in expanding our outpatient surgery center for orthopedic cases? What would the financial impact be if we moved 20% of our colonoscopies from the hospital outpatient department to our affiliated ASC?” – all backed by hard data.

One final note here – Avant-garde’s site-of-service analysis also ties in quality and outcomes: if outcomes are equal, shifting to the lower-cost setting might be ideal; but if complication rates differ, those are factored into the margin calculations (for example, a higher readmission rate in one setting could erode the margin advantage). By bringing clarity to these complex financial questions, Avant-garde enables better strategic planning.

Feature 5: AI-Powered Coding Accuracy & Revenue Integrity

Even after a procedure is done, hospitals can lose revenue if coding and billing aren’t perfect. In complex surgical cases, it's not uncommon for procedures to be inaccurately coded based solely on the operative note, overlooking critical context provided by the supplies and devices used. This mismatch leads to revenue leakage and missed reimbursement opportunities.

Traditional revenue cycle audits often catch errors only retrospectively or through limited case sampling. Worse, they typically operate in silos separate from operational and supply chain data. As a result, hospitals may be leaving significant money on the table, even while working hard to manage costs elsewhere.

The challenge is clear: ensuring revenue integrity demands the same level of sophisticated, integrated analysis that hospitals apply to cost containment—but most tools fall short.

Ensuring Revenue Integrity with an AI Safety Net

Avant-garde Health’s CareMeasurement platform offers a novel approach to revenue integrity by using proprietary algorithms to analyze each surgical case holistically. Rather than relying solely on the operative note, the platform examines the supplies and implants used in the case and compares them to the procedural code that was ultimately billed. This allows the system to identify potential mismatches—cases where the resources consumed suggest a more complex procedure than was documented or coded.

This capability enables hospitals to flag cases where billing may be inaccurate or incomplete—not by checking for a single missing charge code, but by identifying when the entire case may have been miscoded. By cross-referencing clinical, supply, and billing data in one integrated view, Avant-garde can proactively alert teams to discrepancies and ensure appropriate reimbursement before the claim is submitted.

This approach is much more proactive than traditional audits, functioning in real time and continuously operating in the background as part of the workflow. It not only prevents revenue leakage but also reveals root causes—such as surgeon documentation habits or procedure types prone to miscoding—allowing hospitals to implement systemic fixes.

Essentially, the platform serves as a continuously operating AI audit system, ensuring that coding and billing accurately reflect the care delivered and the resources utilized.

Insight into Action with Healthcare Data Analytics Using AI

Avant-garde’s CareMeasurement platform stands out by turning data into action where other platforms fall short.

Leading EHR systems are excellent for documentation but weren’t built to provide intuitive cost or operational guidance. Finance-focused analytics tools often require expert analysts to extract insights, limiting usability for clinicians. And while benchmarking services offer comparative data, many hospital leaders still find it hard to translate those benchmarks into day-to-day decisions.

It’s telling that hospital CFOs are prioritizing better analytics – 73% plan to invest in better analytics and 64% are spending on comparative data and benchmarks – but they need a user-friendly way to consume it.

Avant-garde Health fills that gap.

No more flying blind on cost variation, no more accepting OR inefficiencies as inevitable, and no more revenue lost to avoidable errors. If you’re ready to tackle cost and revenue challenges head-on and reap significant ROI for your organization, now is the time to act.

Join leading hospitals like Penn State Hershey Medical and Newton Wellesley – Mass General: Schedule a personalized demo today!