Nothing tells a good story better than relevancy, accuracy, and timeliness. When it comes to seeking investments on the best of terms, there’s no better way to tell the story than through the use of BI-generated Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). In the past, we have identified how BI can help you more effectively monitor and manage your operations.  But, did you know that BI can also serve as a great resource for communicating your market dominance and strengths? It’s transparent. It’s current information delivered when and how you need it – automatically.

Ray Tyler, Health Services Management’s COO, reports that “one of the biggest advantages to Business Intelligence is our ability to…quickly prepare and submit reports to key stakeholders, such as REITs. We can view and report on actual-to-budget (performance).”

Along with demonstrating company background and experience, uniqueness, and business model effectiveness, providers have to know their numbers. BI helps them significantly by automating reports and KPI views. Because they don’t have to prepare reports manually, executives have more time to conveniently familiarize themselves with those numbers. They can know the “what’s” and “why’s” quickly.

As Dean Kiklis, CFO for Frontline Management, stated recently, “The dashboard helps us to know what is happening in each of our buildings every single day….(Because) it’s up to date…, we don’t have to wait for someone to create reports for us.”

Further, BI makes it easy for executives to trend and report their companies’ performance year over year. BI can also help prospective investors evaluate provider revenue streams and other critical cash flow information.

Creating context? BI can help there as well. NIC’s Skilled Nursing Data Initiative is one way participating providers can compare their operations against national benchmarks. Thus, they are able to demonstrate their strengths and dominance within the markets they serve.

How has BI helped you in managing and promoting your company to investors?

You can’t go wrong with Business Intelligence (BI). But if you are new to the game, knowing which Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are more useful to seasoned LTPAC BI Pros, those who were early adopters, may be useful. From start-ups to well-established providers, executives and managers have selected what they consider to be the most important KPIs for their operations. Let’s look.

Frontline Management’s Dean Kiklis, CFO, knows the importance of BI to multi-facility operations. In the beginning, the management team skipped the step of manually creating reports and moved right to BI to meet its aggressive information and scalability requirements for this rapidly growing company. Kiklis says, “By doing it right the first time, we won’t have to face a disruptive economic and operational challenge later on.” Focusing on census, labor and Days Sales Outstanding every Monday with daily updates throughout the week, Frontline Management is able to observe quickly the daily status of these key areas of its operation. For example, since employing primeVIEW, Days Sales Outstanding have dropped by 10 days.

Southeast-based American Healthcare, LLC operates multiple SNFS in Virginia. To remain competitive in a rapidly-evolving, quality-driven reimbursement environment, Robbie Dalton, CFO, reports that controlling costs are critical. Because labor consumes over 65%-75% of total spend, having a firm hand on labor is mission critical. In primeVIEW, the current daily census and labor are automatically tied, affording management a precise view each day of staffing to budget and actual census. This insight gives AHC’s management team opportunities to train Administrators and DONS to more effectively oversee staffing during each shift. Routinely, management uses PCT’s primeVIEW BI dashboard during its weekly census calls and goal setting.

Revenue is also important to AHC and BI has helped its facilities to increase the average daily census of skilled patients by 7% and private pay by 9% over a 12-month period, resulting in revenue increases of $2.6 million and $980,000 respectively.

Jackson, Mississippi-based Health Care Management, Inc. (HCM), reports Greg Seeger, COO, is able to track what is going on at each of its facilities. “We train our team to use primeVIEW as their go-to KPI information source to track census, labor, 5-star, length of stay, clinical quality, receivables, cash flow, and more. It’s a tremendous resource.” Utilizing the dashboard enables the team to identify discharge types and forecast trends. In addition, decision makers from the facility to the corporate office can access the current census levels by total as well as by payer type which enables the facility to forecast their labor and cash projections with ease.

Health Services Management’s Ray Tyler, COO, reports, “One of the biggest advantages to primeVIEW is our ability to view labor from a consolidated corporate, as well as a facility and even department and employee level…not only today, but we can trend and report on past performance as well.” Take overtime for example. PrimeVIEW’s facility, regional, and corporate reporting enables administrators and their department heads to view not only their performance, but they can also observe how they are doing compared to the other facilities within the company. Information in the dashboard helped HSM facilities reduce OT by an average of three percentage points in the nursing department alone.

Because BI generates current and relevant views of critical LTPAC-related and configurable KPIs, executives and managers are able to monitor and effectively manage those KPIs which are critical to achieving strategic goals. Take it from the pros, they literally know what they are doing and the impact their decisions can have on facility performance.

Nationwide, 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.

2. 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

3. 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.

“If you build it, they will come.” For those of you who are Field of Dream fans, like me, yes, I admit this is a misquote. (It should read, “If you build it, he will come.”) But for the purposes of this blog, we can take some liberties and Hollywood should forgive us.  Let’s assume you and other members of the management team are persuaded that business intelligence (BI) is THE way to go to improve performance through data mining and KPI reporting automation. You’ve determined that outsourcing BI makes the most sense and you’ve purchased and are ready to implement the best, most cost-effective, and easy to implement solution available. You’re ready to go, but what about those further down the decision chain? Just because you’ve made the decision, doesn’t mean they will follow. Are they ready? Will they use it? How can you be sure?

Not surprisingly, we have noticed that unless leaders take certain steps, they will be frustrated by implementation’s fitful nature. They spend more time trying to get manager buy-off than solving the problems and seizing the opportunities BI reveals. So what’s required? Leadership. Leadership of change. (I give credit to my mentor, Dr. D. Tyler Nelson, PhD, who over twelve years ago introduced this to me and I now share its highlights with you.)

Change is only the beginning

First of all, change is only the start; it’s a beginning. It’s situational. Over your career how many times have you seen new initiatives introduced with a big announcement, training programs, perhaps a new policy and procedure manual, only to see them at best take longer to be implemented than desired or at worst die of inertia? Why? Lack of effective transition management. A successful transition is essential if the change is to work as planned. In this case, helping people transition from the old reporting habits to enthusiastically embracing BI.

“Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof.” - John Kenneth Galbraith

Transition starts with and ending and ends with a beginning

To be brief, while change is simply situational, transition, on the other hand, is psychological.  It’s guiding people through the process of:

• Realizing an ending to the old ways,
• Acknowledging and dealing with the sense of loss associated with the ending,
• Letting go of the old ways,
• Seeing the vision of the new when the new isn’t fully operational, and
• Embracing and making a new beginning.

Change management is to understand the desired outcome and how to get there; transition management is to convince people to leave “home”.

As the BI champion, you’ll succeed when you acknowledge that transition starts with an ending (of the old) and finishes with a beginning (of the new).  It starts with the ending your BI users will have to make to leave behind the old ways of reporting.  Within the bullet points above are the keys to what you must do to help your users move through transition to:

• Significantly reduce the negative effects change can have on productivity
• Shorten the length of time from the inception of BI implementation to the achievement of the final desired performance targets. i.e. the use of BI to achieve your organization’s goals
• Minimize the decline in productivity that naturally follows before full implementation is realized

How’s it done?

In short, our successful clients have made BI part of their management culture. It starts at the top; all decisions are referenced and based on the KPIs viewable in the BI dashboard and reports. One COO refers to the primeVIEW dashboard, PCT’s BI product, during the monthly facility financial review. His regional staff and facility leaders must be just as conversant with the KPIs displayed as he is. Not only do they look at the prior month’s financials, but also at the present situation revealed in primeVIEW. It’s the expectation he has established that. “I am using it; so should you.”

In another company, management accepts only reports viewable and generated by primeVIEW. No other reports are accepted.

At the beginning of its primeVIEW implementation, another customer clearly stated to its management team what is going away, that primeVIEW is replacing it, and clearly described how it will make their lives easier. Because managers no longer have to manually prepare reports, they can more productively spend their time making decisions.

Conclusion

One last point, not everyone transitions at the same pace. Each person is different and that’s where leadership comes in to play. As the BI champion you have to acknowledge where your team members are in the transition process and help them to:

• Leave the past behind,
• Get through the wilderness of reporting uncertainty, profiting from it, and
• Embrace new attitudes, behaviors, and identity (as decision makers, not data gatherers)

While BI tools, like primeVIEW, can be easy to learn and use, each organization’s leaders must ensure that transition is skillfully managed and sound leadership principles applied. It’s putting people and processes together to achieve a certain end – full BI implementation.

Change + Human Beings = Transition

You’re driving down the freeway, heading home from a busy day at work. Remembering the many conversations you had today, you are somewhat preoccupied. You appear to be going with the flow of traffic, but you fail to notice that traffic’s pace is considerably above the posted speed limit. However, your attention is instantly snapped to the here-and-now when you see flashing lights immediately in the rearview mirror. With a statement of frustration (censored, of course), you realize you’ve just been tagged as the bad-boy poster child of speeders and are about to have a one-on-one interview with law enforcement. Now, yes, you have a speedometer. But when was the last time you looked at it?

Having a working speedometer in your car doesn’t prevent you from getting a traffic ticket. It’s only useful if you use it. Likewise, Business Intelligence (BI) is only as good as it is intelligently used. For today’s blog, let me summarize how some of your peers are intelligently using BI.

A vital routine – it’s a matter of culture

We have discovered among our primeVIEW[1] customers that the common thread of success is that BI is an integral part of their corporate culture. Let me quote from a recently-published case study about Health Services Management and how it uses BI, “Today with primeVIEW conspicuously displayed on a large monitor in his office for group discussion, Ray Tyler, HSM’s Chief Operating Officer, and team can observe and examine such Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as census, labor, RUG levels, and accounts receivables throughout the day.”

In another case study, Greg Seeger, Health Care Management’s Chief Operating Officer, reports, “Since the system is so intuitive, the learning curve was short and our staff could just run with it….We train our team to use primeVIEW as their go-to KPI information source to track census, labor, 5-star, length of stay, clinical quality, receivables, cash flow, and more. It’s a tremendous resource.”

We have also learned from another COO of a large multi-facility, multi-state operation[2] that from the time a new decision maker is hired, the use of Business Intelligence is ingrained into her or his daily routine and reinforced regularly.

Daily - facilitating meaningful conversation and accountability

It’s one thing to have the information; it’s entirely another to know what to do with it. Data mining and business intelligence foster communication and meaningful conversation. From the corporate to the division to the region and facility levels, BI is the reference point for clinical, cash flow, labor, and compliance-related conversations. Because the information is timely, decision influencers and decision makers are able to address issues before they reach critical mass.

Further, HSM’s Tyler reports that “primeVIEW’s flexible reporting features related to date ranges and formats are also very valuable to us, because primeVIEW enables us to quickly prepare and submit reports to key stakeholders, such as REITs. We can view and report on actual-to-budget reports, wage rates, OT, etc.’”

Some providers have found that BI-generated information is useful in fostering positive working relationships with referral sources by demonstrating on a regular basis admissions, discharges, and rehospitalization rates along with quantifiable clinical data.

Weekly - staff meetings

In this case study, Dean Kiklis, Frontline Management’s Chief Financial Officer observes that “during its Monday morning staff meetings, …primeVIEW plays a large role. ‘We can readily view what is or is not on target. It’s helpful to be able to keep the team focused on what’s important for the coming week with relevant and up-to-date data….It allows us to surgically address challenges as they arise. It’s up to date so we don’t have to wait for someone to create reports for us.’”

Monthly - financial reviews

Tyler’s use of primeVIEW goes beyond daily operations; “he also refers to it during his monthly financial reviews with facility administrators who simultaneously view performance in specific areas of focus. ‘By the time our P&Ls are ready, they are a month or more in arrears,’ commented Tyler. ‘But with primeVIEW, we can discuss what happened last month and examine current KPIs which directly impact financial performance and help us predict month-end outcomes.’”

Conclusion

By making BI a part of the corporate culture, it facilitates timely and meaningful conversation, adds relevancy to weekly planning and goal-evaluation sessions, and breaths relevancy into monthly financial reviews. Now that is a sound way to help executives and their teams achieve their goals on time and on target. Now, that’s the ticket…to success.

[1] PCT’s Business Intelligence tool

[2] It’s case study will be published in the near future.