Protecting Intellectual Capital

Together, the intellectual capital of your medical staff and your clinical information are the most valuable intangible assets available to your organization. Arguably, your organization’s information, intellectual capital, and money are the top three assets that deserve your investment, attention, and protection. Your organization’s intellectual capital is your people and the knowledge they carry in their heads. In healthcare, protection of this asset is particularly challenging because many of the “people” whose intellectual capital you are seeking to protect are not your employees, but rather members of the medical staff who you may or may not have a formalized relationship with outside of their admission privileges. In healthcare, the most valuable information is the information that captures anything to do with the clinical care your organization provides. This information is created or influenced by the physicians on your medical staff through their documentation and clinical practices. While you may not have the ability to affect the way they practice medicine, you and your organization have the ability, and the obligation to shape the way they document.

There are examples across every industry showing that information can have a clear impact on measures such as costs, cycle time, productivity, and profitability. In healthcare, the clinical information takes on a special property. While it can be used to increase profitability or productivity, your organization’s clinical information can also be used to identify specific strengths of your organization. You can use this information to communicate strengths about your organization to the community, like the numbers of surgeries performed by your surgical teams, and number of patients you treat for certain conditions. These numbers, especially over time, can impact health care consumer decision making.