I would like to recount a couple of innovative case studies in the usage of Business Intelligence for healthcare, that I recently came across:
1. Flu-monitoring dashboard : Analyzing emergency room visits where people arrived at a clinic with flu-like symptoms , tracking various metrics that included what time of day or night the visit took place. They were able to effectively calculate when a spike may occur so they could start diverting patients with flu-like symptoms to another clinic, minimizing the possibility of flu patients infecting others in a crowded waiting room.
2. A prominent county hospital in Arkansas implemented a new incentive program for managers, based on their BI system. It measured departments based on metrics that include dollars spent per patient day, supplies used, expenses, staff hours and overtime. Managers can now regularly monitor these metrics in real-time, and take steps to improve their departments productivity. For example, it was taking the labor and delivery group 48 man hours, on average, for each birth. Now, with the help of the BI tool and proper incentives put in place, it spends 33 hours per birth.
Healthcare BI has traditionally been used as the common, shared, systemic repository of data. It contains insights into provider care capabilities, locations, track record, cost and availability; encounter results, follow-ups, effectiveness, cost, time lines; conditions and treatment plans; patients, conditions, billing; and labs and caregiving locations.
Achieving healthcare BI today means understanding cause/effect relationships such as the relationships between patient health, recovery and follow-up after the execution of alterative treatments for similar conditions. It means optimizing emergency room staffing. Efficient and effective care delivery is where many healthcare organizations are heading.
The ability to continue a BI program into predictive analysis, provider rankings and referral program analysis would provide more ROI. The information BI can provide will not only serve these functions within a healthcare organization, but will also drive operational enhancements.
Here is to hoping we can achieve superior healthcare at lower costs. |
