• By Hiten Rathod
  

Business Intelligence can certainly help any industry to a large extent if it is been deployed and utilized effectively. BI helps the healthcare sector in multiple ways. Silo of data is generated from patient encounters on a daily basis. This data can become useful information with the help of “BI” tools. Not just any information, but information that can help hospitals derive added value from their IT investments by sharpening their decision-making on both the business and clinical sides. Like in most of the industries, healthcare institutions have reporting and analytical needs at all the three levels of planning -including strategic, tactical & operational at grass root level. Most of them have common failures in the planning processes like lack of integration of data & information and lack of timely availability of information for prompt decision making.

BI can connect to the following applications of a healthcare organization for reporting & analytics:

• provider performance
  
• care provisioning
  
• clinical research
  
• staffing level optimization
  
• billing accuracy
  
• optimize claims routing
  
• provider ranking and profiling
  
• referral program effectiveness
  
• occupancy rates
  
• patient safety
  

BI integration in healthcare companies enables the basic analysis such as:

• number of procedures per doctor
  
• hospital resource utilization
  
• length of stay metrics
  
• cost of care by category
  

Also, the next level of analysis can be provided by BI, which consists of:

• patient relationship management
  
• quality outcome support
  
• patient flow metrics
  
• diagnostic and treatment relationships
  
• optimizing duration of patient stay
  
• optimizing skill mix and resource allocation to care delivery
  
• ability to predict and forecast referral patterns
  

Following are few healthcare subject areas which BI can help organizations:

• Provider care capabilities, locations, track record, cost and availability
  
• Encounter results, follow-ups, effectiveness, cost, timelines
  
• Conditions and treatment plans
  
• Patients, conditions, billing
  
• Labs and care-giving locations
  

There is definitely a need for BI in this sector. Healthcare organizations today feel the need for BI to:

• improve efficiency with automation
  
• integrate many disparate data sources
  
• measure, report and sustain improvements in quality and safety
  
• bring multiple groups together in the effort and start to emphasize analysis
  
• push information closer to the point of service to enhance decision-making and to make
  
• the data actionable
  

BI can help the healthcare sector to improve productivity meeting the end-to-end demand of the customers. BI can provide higher quality customer care while keeping costs to a minimum. 1KEY BI application allows the user to change the format in which the data is presented to suit the user’s needs – without the need for programming skills or significant familiarity with the underlying data sources.  A well-designed healthcare BI system should allow any healthcare analyst to utilize most aspects of the system without being trained in its use.

Following Benefits, 1KEY BI offers healthcare institutions:

• A fully integrated data warehousing solution
  
• Role-based access to information from diverse sources
  
• Flexible evaluation and analysis
  
• Tangible cost savings through improved efficiency, productivity & performance management
  
• Rapid and sound decision-making capabilities for CEOs and other management decision makers
  
• Intuitive client user interface
  
• Integration of data from administrative and clinical systems
  
• Integration of benchmarking data
  
• Planning and simulation
  

BI reports with 1KEY BI:

• Security:  Protect sensitive patient related information ensuring that only those with the right access levels have access to it
  
• Financial Analysis:  Quick financial analysis including profitability, AR, cost analysis, ROI
  
• Patient Demographics:  Patient demographic analysis including age, sex, ethnicity, location
  
• Diagnostics:  Prevalent diseases, diagnostics trend, most treated diseases
  
• Performance: Doctors, Departments, Specialties
  
• Supplier Rating System that includes metrics to help manage suppliers more effectively
  
• Are staffing numbers appropriate relative to the daily census levels?
  
• What is the average length of patient stays?
  
• Are supply costs higher than the expected threshold?
  
• Costs and contribution margins per care unit
  
• Evolution of open items per insurance provider
  
• Personnel costs compared with revenue
  
• Medical material requirements per department
  
• Changes in length of stay
  
• Service and revenue controlling
  
• Analysis of case costs
  
• Plan-versus-actual analyses at the cost center level
  
• Material consumption based on case assignment
  
• Material consumption of cost centers
  
• Material movements
  
• Case costs
  
• Top 10 diagnoses
  
• Top 10 procedures
  
• Key figures on basic billing data
  
• Top 10 DRGs (Diagnostics Related Groups)

Posted on May 12th, 2008 by Hiten Rathod
Filed under: Business Intelligence

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