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November 8, 2025 | Monica E. Oss
Health and human services executives universally say they want performance metrics to make data-driven decisions. But according to a new survey—Clinical Architecture 2025 Healthcare Data Quality Report—poor data quality is a problem. Across the field, 79% of executives say poor data quality has a high impact on achieving strategic goals.
About 80% of provider organization executives said their data is of poor quality or mixed quality. For health plans, 60% of executives said their data is of mixed quality. And, 80% of provider organization executives said the poor quality of their data has a significant impact on their organization achieving its strategic goals. This was 65% for health plan executives.
The reasons for data quality problems are mixed. Sixty-five percent of executives reported that limited time and resources to address data quality was a key issue. Lack of interoperability and too much use of free text in data systems were issues for 55% of organizations. And 45% had issues with the design and usability of their software.
Why does this data quality issue matter? Bad data quality derails data-driven decision-making. If measurement is built on inconsistent, incomplete, or inaccurate data, executive teams risk making the wrong strategic choices—because bad data means bad decisions.
In addition, poor data quality is one of the most-cited reasons for organizations failing to achieve their artificial intelligence (AI) investment goals. Over three-quarters of executives (82%) reported that poor data quality has decreased the effectiveness of their AI investments and prevented them from achieving a return on that investment—up from 56% last quarter (see AI & The Human Factor).
In the year ahead, we will continue our coverage of performance management and data-driven decision making. For more on these issues and their role in performance management, check out these resources in the OPEN MINDS Industry Library.
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And for more, join me on February 10, 2026 at The 2026 OPEN MINDS Performance Management Institute for Building A Data-Driven Organization: The 2026 OPEN MINDS Seminar On Making Metrics-Based Management Work, featuring Michael Allen, Executive Vice President at OPEN MINDS.
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