Jonathan Duvall


Recent posts by Jonathan Duvall

2 min read

The top 3 Business Intelligence trends in Long Term Post-Acute Care

By Jonathan Duvall on Tue, Jan 26, 2016 @ 04:30 PM

iStock_000082385933_Small.jpgNationwide, Business Intelligence is increasingly integrated in the day-to-day management of long term post-acute care (LTPAC) facilities. As we have posted in previous blogs, decision makers at the corporate, region, facility, and department levels have adapted to the features and seized the resultant benefits that BI has to offer. Examining the observable trends in LTPAC and some of our own research may be compelling. Here are three of the more obvious trends:

  1. Self-service analytics – What drives self-service is the unsatisfactory reliance on the IT-generated “report factory” which can be slow, often dispensing outdated information. This model of information gathering and distribution places an unnecessary burden on the IT department. However, BI, designed with input from users, is responsive and current. BI gives the users the flexibility and the knowledge to effectively make decisions with up-to-date information right at their fingertips. With data transparency, they have the capacity to drill down to greater details enabling them to ask and answer their own questions.
  1. The gap between governance and self-service analytics is narrowing - In our experience and research, decision makers can get access to the data they need without having to go through someone else, such as the IT department, to deliver the information. This results in a reduction in the gap between technology and management. Let IT do what it does best, gather and store data securely. And let management retrieve the information through BI which automates data retrieval across disparate applications to generate user-friendly views with drill-down capabilities and custom-designed reports
  1. BI for everyone - BI has become the decision-enabling and planning tool for any manager, department head, or leader. If users have decision-making authority, they can access relevant, timely, and actionable information. We have observed over the eight-plus years we have offered a BI solution, that BI satisfies the growing hunger for a broader menu of digestible information to fuel savings, compliance, and growth at the department, facility, region, and corporate levels.

One of BI’s benefits is that it helps decision makers discover new questions – a world of analytics of which they may not have been aware. Sometimes it takes more questions and answers to generate more questions and answers to discover, decide, and succeed. And that’s good. For the more precise the probing, potential problems emerge before they get out of hand and new opportunities are discovered before they get away. One COO mentioned recently that primeVIEW (PCT’s BI dashboard solution) has alerted his team to problems they had not before discovered when their only source of information was the “reporting factory”.

Because primeVIEW is customer driven, we have watched this desire for more in-depth information with keen interest and responded quickly with new views and reports. Often customers will request a new and expanded, or more in-depth, view of a particular KPI or set of KPIs, such as census, admissions, discharges, and readmissions to hospitals, among others. This access to more information has a direct impact on efficiencies, cash flow, and the bottom line.

These are the top three trends we have observed and responded to, developing the primeVIEW platform further as the self-analytics source, to narrow the gap between governance and what IT departments deliver – a tool for all decision makers. As LTPAC moves into the new world of care and reimbursement models, they can be confident they will be able to get the right answers to the right questions through BI.

Topics: business intelligence analytics BI for everyone governance and self-service analytics gaps reporting factory LTPAC BI self-service analytics
3 min read

Data Warehousing: Giving Your Data Meaning

By Jonathan Duvall on Tue, Oct 13, 2015 @ 06:44 PM

Give You Data Mining MeaningA revisit to the world of data mining

Simply stated, to data mine is to analyze data from a variety of perspectives and to convert the findings into valuable (or actionable) information in the form of graphs, charts, and/or tables. This information identifies previously hidden or difficult to spot performance patterns to help providers improve clinical outcomes, increase revenues, convert those revenues to cash, and cut costs. But let’s pause for a brief moment and go just one step deeper

What is data and data warehousing?

We throw the term, “data”, around a lot, but what is it? Data embraces any and all facts, numbers, and texts which computers can process. If your organization uses computers, you have data – lots of it. But more than likely, your data resides in disparate data locations existing in the clinical, financial, time and attendance, procurement, etc. applications your organization uses. More than likely, these applications don’t speak to each other, impeding performance pattern discovery. Data warehousing gives data meaning.

OK. So what is a data warehouse? Data warehousing centralizes data management and retrieval of all of your organization’s data. Just as the name implies, it is a virtual (in the cloud) or physical (a data server) location where you can store and manage data in a multidimensional database system. Ideally, the warehouse can automatically extract or pump data from diverse data repositories. A physical warehouse has an inventory which is only useful if you can find and combine what you are looking for to achieve your intended ends. For data warehousing to be useful, you need software to help you effectively mine all of your data to help you achieve your organizational goals

Data mining and long term care – bringing it home

The “spectrum of care” is a term used for many years to describe various health care delivery models and their relationship one with another. Just look at Long Term and Post-Acute Care – Skilled Nursing Facilities, Home Care and Hospice, Long Term Acute Care Hospitals, Inpatient Rehabilitation Facilities, Assisted Living Facilities, PACE (Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly), and Independent Care. Yet, we are witnesses to possibly a major shift from provider silos to a person-centric delivery model. It embodies only one healthcare segment, the individual. For that to happen, data warehousing is a must

But for now, whether the person-centric model happens sooner or later, your organization needs to know if you are the right setting for the right services at the right time at the right acuity and at the right cost. In other words, data mining can have meaning for your organization right now. It goes both ways - what the payer wants to pay and what outcomes you can afford to deliver with that paymen

Dashboards – the one-stop shop for all data-driven decisions

There is a third term to understand – business intelligence. In short, BI delivers meaningful and actionable information for business analysis purposes. And it’s available today delivering patterns of information through Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) meaningful to your organization and viewable in a dashboard with drilldown capabilities. These KPIs include census, labor, financial, cash, clinical, among others relevant to your organization’s mission

Results-focused

Users of our primeVIEW executive management dashboard have seen real, measurable results because they have been able to view performance patterns practically in real time. For example:

  • An operator of 17 SNFs was able to manage 71% of its buildings to achieve overtime goals within 3 months resulting in significant savings.

  • Real-time census monitoring helped the same provider keep his team focused to realize a 7% and 9% increase in ADC in Skilled and Private Pay respectively from 2014 to 2015.

  • Another similarly-sized operator of SNFs reports an 18.5% improvement in Days Sales Outstanding while achieving 100% collection efforts using the financial information screens.

  • A 41-facility SNF operator was able to gain back up to three FTE’s in labor hours in targeted facilities by using the labor and overtime management features.

  • The same operator reports that primeVIEW has helped them track dozens of critical measures, such as 5-Star staffing, hospital readmission, and length of stay.

  • Another multi-facility operator was able to reduce nursing staff overtime by 3% with organization-wide access to overtime screens.

All of this adds up to real take-it-to-the-bank meaning regardless of what the future holds for healthcare delivery.

Business Intelligence

Featured

Posts by Tag

See all