A Consumer’s Guide to Understanding Data - Data Fluency: Empowering Your Organization with Effective Data Communication - page 58

When data products lack a clear starting point, you as the reader must find
your own path through the information. Later in this chapter, you will read
some pointers on how to extract meaning from charts and tables, and ideas
of where to start your investigation.
INCONSISTENCY
Often you'll get conflicting stories as you look at data products. Try not to get
caught up in trying to stamp out these inconsistencies. Different data products
were developed for different needs and have different histories.
Returning to the healthcare client that uses CMS data (referenced in the
section titled “Data Products” in this chapter), you might consider the pri-
oritized list provided to the sales team. The top hospitals by government
Medicare expenditure isn't a bad list to use when trying to determine which
institutions are the biggest and deserve the most attention for future sales
calls. However, when a sales person compared this government list (via the
SalesForce data product) to a popular website listing the top 50 healthcare
institutions—there was inconsistency. Why? Because large hospital systems
may have a different CMS identification number for each of their facilities.
The SalesForce data product had facility level data. The popular website
found by the sales person included health systems that were not broken
down into their respective facilities. Regardless, either list would have been
a good place to start from with respect to client prospecting! If you spend
the majority of your time stamping out such inconsistencies, you might have
perfectly synchronized lists; however, you'll never get around to making any
sales call. Data needs to be good enough to help you make a better deci-
sion about something you face right now. Tomorrow there will be new (and
hopefully better) sources of data.
Data products aren't synchronized swimming (Figure 4-11)—perfect harmony
isn't required.
Water polo is a better analogy (Figure 4-12)—move the ball forward and stay
in your position.