Analytical Solutions to Common Healthcare Problems (Coursera)

Analytical Solutions to Common Healthcare Problems (Coursera)

In this course, we’re going to go over analytical solutions to common healthcare problems. I will review these business problems and you’ll build out various data structures to organize your data. We’ll then explore ways to group data and categorize medical codes into analytical categories. You will then be able to extract, transform, and load data into data structures required for solving medical problems and be able to also harmonize data from multiple sources.

Class Deals by MOOC List - Click here and see Coursera's Active Discounts, Deals, and Promo Codes.

Finally, you will create a data dictionary to communicate the source and value of data. Creating these artifacts of data processes is a key skill when working with healthcare data.
Course 4 of 4 in the Health Information Literacy for Data Analytics Specialization.

Syllabus

WEEK 1
Solving the Business Problems
In this module, you will explain why comparing healthcare providers with respect to quality can be beneficial, and what types of metrics and reporting mechanisms can drive quality improvement. You'll recognize the importance of making quality comparisons fairer with risk adjustment and be able to defend this methodology to healthcare providers by stating the importance of clinical and non-clinical adjustment variables, and the importance of high-quality data. You will distinguish the important conceptual steps of performing risk-adjustment; and be able to express the serious nature of medical errors within the US healthcare system, and communicate to stakeholders that reliable performance measures and associated interventions are available to help solve this tremendous problem. You will distinguish the traits that help categorize people into the small group of super-utilizers and summarize how this population can be identified and evaluated. You'll inform healthcare managers how healthcare fraud differs from other types of fraud by illustrating various schemes that fraudsters use to expropriate resources. You will discuss analytical methods that can be applied to healthcare data systems to identify potential fraud schemes.

WEEK 2
Algorithms and "Groupers"
In this module, you will define clinical identification algorithms, identify how data are transformed by algorithm rules, and articulate why some data types are more or less reliable than others when constructing the algorithms. You will also review some quality measures that have NQF endorsement and that are commonly used among health care organizations. You will discuss how groupers can help you analyze a large sample of claims or clinical data. You'll access open source groupers online, and prepare an analytical plan to map codes to more general and usable diagnosis and procedure categories. You will also prepare an analytical plan to map codes to more general and usable analytical categories as well as prepare a value statement for various commercial groupers to inform analytic teams what benefits they can gain from these commercial tools in comparison to the licensing and implementation costs.

WEEK 3
ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load)
In this module, you will describe logical processes used by database and statistical programmers to extract, transform, and load (ETL) data into data structures required for solving medical problems. You will also harmonize data from multiple sources and prepare integrated data files for analysis.

WEEK 4
From Data to Knowledge
In this module, you will describe to an analytical team how risk stratification can categorize patients who might have specific needs or problems. You'll list and explain the meaning of the steps when performing risk stratification. You will apply some analytical concepts such as groupers to large samples of Medicare data, also use the data dictionaries and codebooks to demonstrate why understanding the source and purpose of data is so critical. You will articulate what is meant by the general phase -- “Context matters when analyzing and interpreting healthcare data.” You will also communicate specific questions and ideas that will help you and others on your analytical team understand the meaning of your data.

Go to Class
MOOC List is learner-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Related Courses

Approximation Algorithms Part I (Coursera) Coursera
École normale supérieure

Approximation Algorithms Part I (Coursera)

How efficiently can you pack objects into a minimum number of boxes? How well can you cluster nodes so as to cheaply separate a network into components around a few centers? These are examples of NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems. It is most likely impossible to solve such problems efficiently, so our aim is to give an approximate solution that can be computed in polynomial time and that at the same time has provable guarantees on its cost relative to the optimum.

Nov 23rd 2026
5-12 Weeks
Health Concepts in Chinese Medicine (Coursera) Coursera
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology - HKUST

Health Concepts in Chinese Medicine (Coursera)

Chinese Medicine and Modern Medicine are two distinct medical systems, yet they both aim at the prevention and treatment of human diseases. With this in mind, we should understand the practice of Chinese Medicine in the context of Modern Medicine. In this course, we explore the basic theories underlying the practice of Chinese Medicine, compare and contrast the use of Chinese Medicine and Modern Medicine in Preventive Health, and discuss how to restore a healthy condition and understand the pharmacological basis of different types of Chinese tonifying herbs.

Nov 23rd 2026
5-12 Weeks
HI-FIVE: Health Informatics For Innovation, Value & Enrichment (Social/Peer Perspective) (Coursera) Coursera
Columbia University

HI-FIVE: Health Informatics For Innovation, Value & Enrichment (Social/Peer Perspective) (Coursera)

HI-FIVE (Health Informatics For Innovation, Value & Enrichment) Training is an approximately 10-hour online course designed by Columbia University in 2016, with sponsorship from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). The training is role-based and uses case scenarios. Our nation’s healthcare system is changing at a rapid pace. Transformative health care delivery programs depend heavily on health information technology to improve and coordinate care, maintain patient registries, support patient engagement, develop and sustain data infrastructure necessary for multi-payer value-based payment, and enable analytical capacities to inform decision making and streamline reporting.

Nov 23rd 2026
4 Weeks
Sistemas Digitales: De las puertas lógicas al procesador (Coursera) Coursera
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Sistemas Digitales: De las puertas lógicas al procesador (Coursera)

En este curso aprenderemos los fundamentos del diseño de los circuitos digitales actuales, siguiendo una orientación eminentemente práctica. A diferencia de otros cursos más "clásicos" de Circuitos Digitales, nuestro interés se centrará más en el Sistema que en la Electrónica que lo sustenta. Este enfoque nos permitirá sentar las bases del diseño de Sistemas Digitales complejos.

Nov 23rd 2026
5-12 Weeks
Take the Lead on Healthcare Quality Improvement (Coursera) Coursera
Case Western Reserve University

Take the Lead on Healthcare Quality Improvement (Coursera)

In this course you will learn about the importance of quality in healthcare and how you can contribute by implementing a quality improvement (QI) project to improve processes of care and patient outcomes. You will learn about powerful tools to add to your QI ‘toolbox’ during short lectures and reflective exercises. You will apply these tools to the implementation of a QI project in your own practice setting or an area of personal improvement. At the completion of the course, you will have a storyboard that captures your QI project success to share with others.

Nov 23rd 2026
5-12 Weeks
An Introduction to Global Health (Coursera) Coursera
University of Copenhagen

An Introduction to Global Health (Coursera)

This course will provide you with an overview of the most important health challenges facing the world today. You will gain insight into how challenges have changed over time, we will discuss the likely determinants of such changes and examine future projections. Successful international strategies and programs promoting human health will be highlighted and global health governance structures will be mapped and the role of the key actors explored.

Nov 23rd 2026
5-12 Weeks
Analysis of Algorithms (Coursera) Coursera
Princeton University

Analysis of Algorithms (Coursera)

This course teaches a calculus that enables precise quantitative predictions of large combinatorial structures. In addition, this course covers generating functions and real asymptotics and then introduces the symbolic method in the context of applications in the analysis of algorithms and basic structures such as permutations, trees, strings, words, and mappings.

Nov 23rd 2026
5-12 Weeks
Probabilistic Graphical Models 3: Learning (Coursera) Coursera
Stanford University

Probabilistic Graphical Models 3: Learning (Coursera)

Probabilistic graphical models (PGMs) are a rich framework for encoding probability distributions over complex domains: joint (multivariate) distributions over large numbers of random variables that interact with each other. These representations sit at the intersection of statistics and computer science, relying on concepts from probability theory, graph algorithms, machine learning, and more. They are the basis for the state-of-the-art methods in a wide variety of applications, such as medical diagnosis, image understanding, speech recognition, natural language processing, and many, many more. They are also a foundational tool in formulating many machine learning problems.

Nov 23rd 2026
5-12 Weeks
Statistical Mechanics: Algorithms and Computations (Coursera) Coursera
École normale supérieure

Statistical Mechanics: Algorithms and Computations (Coursera)

In this course you will learn a whole lot of modern physics (classical and quantum) from basic computer programs that you will download, generalize, or write from scratch, discuss, and then hand in. Join in if you are curious (but not necessarily knowledgeable) about algorithms, and about the deep insights into science that you can obtain by the algorithmic approach.

Nov 23rd 2026
5-12 Weeks
The City and You: Find Your Best Place (Coursera) Coursera
University of Toronto

The City and You: Find Your Best Place (Coursera)

Welcome to The City and You: Find Your Best Place. I'm excited to have you in the class and look forward to your contributions to the other learners in our community. This free course will provide the knowledge and the tools needed to understand what cities do, why they matter, the forces shaping the greatest wave of urbanization in history, and how to pick the right place for you.

Nov 23rd 2026
5-12 Weeks
Remote Sensing Image Acquisition, Analysis and Applications (Coursera) Coursera
UNSW Sydney - University of New South Wales

Remote Sensing Image Acquisition, Analysis and Applications (Coursera)

Welcome to Remote Sensing Image Acquisition, Analysis and Applications, in which we explore the nature of imaging the earth's surface from space or from airborne vehicles. This course covers the fundamental nature of remote sensing and the platforms and sensor types used. It also provides an in-depth treatment of the computational algorithms employed in image understanding, ranging from the earliest historically important techniques to more recent approaches based on deep learning.

Nov 30th 2026
13-24 Weeks
Service Transformed: Lessons in U.S. Veteran Centered Care (Coursera) Coursera
University of Michigan

Service Transformed: Lessons in U.S. Veteran Centered Care (Coursera)

Improving health care for veterans has become a matter of national attention and has gained increasing attention from the medical community. With the current surge of veterans reintegrating into civilian society it is critical to improve the training of the next cadre of providers who will provide care for our veterans. It is widely known that veterans receive care in all aspects of the health system, thus providers in veteran focused care facilities, military health serves and civilian locals must be aware of the unique needs of veterans. It is perhaps even more important to educate civilian providers who may be unfamiliar with the unique physical, mental and emotional needs related to military service.

Nov 23rd 2026
5-12 Weeks