What your EHR isn’t capturing: The data gap costing health systems
Health systems have access to an increasing amount of data across their infrastructure, yet much of the most clinically relevant information is buried in unstructured formats. This data gap leads to inefficiencies, delays in care and missed financial opportunities.
In a recent presentation hosted by Becker’s Healthcare, Mauricio Garcia Jacques, MD, CEO and founder of Raport, discussed how AI is helping health systems surface hidden insights and transform care coordination.
Here are four key takeaways from the session:
1. Unstructured data is a multimillion-dollar blind spot
Dr. Garcia Jacques emphasized that while EHRs are full of valuable information, around 80% is stored in formats like PDFs and scanned documents, rendering it invisible to analytics tools. This results in manual chart reviews, delays and lost revenue.
Health systems also continue to invest considerable resources on redundant testing and administrative overhead. For example, Dr. Garcia Jacques highlighted an estimated $200 billion annually due to inaccessible prior records causing costly duplicate testing.
“We know providers had the imaging or the lab done, but since we don’t have it readily available, it’s easier to just redo the test to have that answer right away rather than calling our colleagues or other health systems to get this information,” said Dr. Garcia Jacques.
2. Surfacing the right data
Rather than jumping to futuristic AI applications, Dr. Garcia Jacques advocates focusing on surfacing and structuring existing data. Raport’s platform ingests unstructured documents and extracts clinical concepts, mapping them to standards like ICD-10 and SNOMED.
“If you’re not capturing all of these risk factors, you’re leaving one on the table,” Dr. Garcia Jacques said. “You cannot just get a one size fits all implemented in your system and maximize its revenue right away. It has to be adapted to the data that matters to you.”
In a live demo, the platform identified eligibility for procedures like discectomies based on extracted clinical evidence from prior visits. This capability supports faster prior authorization, smarter triage and fewer missed opportunities for care.
3. Automation improves workflows
By integrating structured and unstructured data, Raport helps reduce manual review time, improve billing accuracy and identify risk factors early. In one use case, the platform enabled a clinic to cut same-day surgical cancellations in half by flagging conditions such as uncontrolled diabetes.
In another example, Raport was used to clean up ICD-10 coding discrepancies that previously limited the ability to benchmark provider outcomes. The platform reclassified injuries with greater specificity and fed data into a real-time dashboard for contract performance tracking.
“It’s a stratification for smarter care navigation” Dr. Garcia Jacques said. “We not only help with the previous charts, we also build a system that would automate without having to have staff manually create the future database roles and patients to be integrated.”
4. Implementation must match clinical reality
Dr. Garcia Jacques noted that AI deployment in healthcare often fails due to poor alignment with day-to-day workflows. His approach is to provide role-specific dashboards, from front desk staff to care managers, and tailoring deployments to the unique goals of each site.
“We are trying to automate all the high effort tasks, not to replace your staff,” Dr. Garcia Jacques said. “We want to supercharge them and level the playing field so that they have the information available and they can predict issues whereas the system is backing them up.”
For Dr. Garcia Jacques, AI doesn’t have to be futuristic to be transformational. By unlocking the value of unstructured data, health systems can streamline operations, reduce burnout and make smarter clinical and financial decisions.
“I don’t think we need unstructured software that is disconnected,” Dr. Garcia Jacques said. “We want one that makes the continuum of care easier across all the different steps and brings your hidden logic that’s in that data forward so that you can have clarity on the future direction of your organizations.”
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