We have discussed the different areas where business intelligence (BI) tools can help executives and staff make business decisions and conduct health care data analysis. However, it is just as critical to define how the information will be presented -- for any data to be usable and successful it simply needs to be easy to read and use.
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Fortunately, as BI tools have evolved, they have put the end user in the driver's seat. While there is still a large amount of prep work that must be performed behind the scene -- preparing the data, integrating systems and defining the data models, to name three -- many of today's tools provide easy-to-use interfaces to support reporting and statistical data mining capability.
There are several different health care data analysis methods available for viewing and manipulating information. Four popular options are discussed below.
The pivot table, modeled after pivots in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, is a representation of summarized information in a multidimensional method. One way to use pivot tables is to define the total charges of physicians over period of time. Pivot tablets can also generate graphs that display, say, payment or charge trends over time.
Within scorecards users can find several pieces of information. One example would be a scorecard that contains some of the following meaningful use criteria in one area:
- Median time from emergency department (ED) arrival to ED departure for admitted patients
- Admission decision time to ED departure time for admitted patients
- Median time from ED arrival to ED departure for discharged ED patients
In health care data analysis, for example, users could see a KPI that displays the average wait time from door to physician in the ER.
Key Performance Indicators (KPI) represent a set of measures that focus on the aspects of organizational performance that are critical for a particular end user or executive. In health care data analysis, for example, users could see a KPI that displays the average wait time from door to physician in the ER. The longer it takes the ER to get the patient in front of the physician, the lower the rating the KPI would display.
Finally, dashboards provide a centralized location where each executive can view a set of KPIs, scorecards and graphs based on his or her business unit or job roles. These dashboards can be displayed on large screens or be called up as the homepage for end users when they log on to a workstation or laptop.
For some time now, we have seen organizational leaders increase their use of evidence-based decision making tools to measure and collect data. It is important for health care organizations to focus on metrics that will drive the business to work toward excellence and higher performance. In doing so they will achieve the goals that any hospital organization is looking to do -- improve patient care, reduce operational costs and streamline internal processes and procedures.
Reda Chouffani is the co-founder and vice president of development at Biz Technology Solutions Inc. Let us know what you think about the story; email editor@searchhealthit.com.
This was first published in October 2011
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