Data Culture

?Compliance Tools? discusses the various techniques and methods used by quality and compliance professionals in their daily work responsibilities. We intend this column to be a resource for daily work applications.

Reader comments, questions, and suggestions for discussion topics are needed to help us fulfill the column objective. Please send your comments and suggestions to column coordinator Lynn Torbeck at lynn@torbeck.org or to managing editor Susan Haigney at shaigney@advanstar.com.

KEY POINTS

The following key points are discussed:

* A data culture is characterized by an approach of questions and phrases such as ?How many?? ?Compared to what?? and ?What gets measured gets done?

* Compliance professionals must develop their own skills and motivation toward a data focus

* Compliance professionals must work to build a culture of measurement and data, and to integrate that culture into their organizations for the benefit of the company and its patients

* Management must support the development of a data culture.

INTRODUCTION

I have a friend that is an accomplished artist. He and his wife have a good business with homes in the Chicago area and overlooking the Alps in Europe. I suspect he is not a numbers person, nor does he have to be. His wife handles all of the sales, marketing, and financial details of contracts and expenses. She doesn?t paint.

Some companies are like my friends. Apple is known for its artistic approach to computing and Google is known as an engineer?s …