Likely you’ve heard the old Biblical reference about the fruitless outcome of trying to put new wine in an old bottle. Sometimes you just have to discard the old bottle and start afresh with a new one. From an organizational standpoint, that means scrapping the old ways and introducing the new. Business Intelligence with its Key Performance Indicators and dashboard views are the new wine of data-driven decisions. But as intoxicating as that may sound, if you try to introduce it into the old bottle of your organization’s old ways of reporting and communications, you may have an informational hangover. So what can the new bottle look like? I suggest the following may help, based on some of our BI customers’ successful practices:

• Make BI part of your organizational culture - your mission and objectives
• Tie BI to performance incentives
• Use BI daily – communications and support
• Include BI in your monthly financial and operational performance reviews

Make BI part of your organizational culture – your mission and objectives

In our recent blog, I introduced the following:

“I like the concept of each organization focusing its decision making on its mission and objectives. BI helps significantly to do just that, because executives and management can identify and align Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to the broader organization’s mission, goals, strategies, and culture as well as to each of its business units’ objectives. The magic of BI is that the information displayed can be rolled up or drilled down to specific levels of interest and responsibility within the organization. Let’s say that the COO, who likely would never log into his or her organization’s clinical application, can view a consolidated corporate view or an expanded view of all regions’ or facilities’ clinical KPIs. Likewise, a department head can view his or her specific KPIs benchmarked against department-specific goals.”

Doing so, makes the next step easier.

Tie BI to performance incentives

One of our customers, operating over 40 buildings across five states, has tied administrator and other executive incentive plans to the KPIs specific to their responsibilities. Doing so keeps the entire organization focused on tightly-defined outcomes tied to the company’s overall mission and objectives as mentioned above. This makes accountability measurable and immediate. And because BI is “real time”, it is a useful tool for coaching, facilitating, supporting, and redirecting. This unique level of transparency is motivational. It helps leaders to review their performance trends and, where appropriate, even within the context of how they are doing compared to their peers.

Use BI daily – communication and support

Many of our customers use BI in their daily morning stand-up meetings. Because of the dashboard’s flexibility, the dashboard administrator can determine who sees what information based on predetermined roll-based permissions. Department heads can view their relevant KPIs, while their administrators/executive directors can view all department and facility-specific KPIs. Regional managers and consultants view consolidated regional information as well as specific facility and department performance. CEOs, COOs, and CFOs can view consolidated information at a corporate level or drill down to region and facility information as desired.

This helps also to simplify communication up and down the organizational structure. Facility, regional and corporate staff no longer have to ask, “What?” They can dwell on the “why” and what to do about the opportunities or challenges that the “what” reveals.

Include BI in your monthly financial and operational performance reviews

One COO of a multi-facility chain, reports that he uses the dashboard during the monthly financial and operational reviews. “Today with primeVIEW (PCT’s BI dashboard) conspicuously displayed on a large monitor in his office for group discussion, (Ray Tyler, COO of Health Services Management Group) and (his) team can observe and examine such Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as census, labor, RUG levels, and accounts receivable throughout the day. His use of primeVIEW goes beyond daily operations; Tyler also refers to it during his monthly financial reviews with facility administrators who simultaneously view performance in 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.’”

Summary

Business Intelligence can become an integral part of your organization’s communication, management, leadership, and accountability structure. Inculcating in how you lead and oversee your business can yield significant dividends.

To somewhat freshen up a term that can become stale due to overuse or, possibly, misuse, I would like to spin “business intelligence” (or business analytics) and convert it to “intelligent business.” Sometimes, playing with words (which is fun for me at times) can reshape our paradigms. “Business intelligence” implies the use of systems and processes which simplify the retrieval of data and its conversion into actionable information readily accessible to decision makers in real time[1]. But business intelligence goes beyond technology tools; BI is indeed "intelligent business" decision making. But first, let’s talk about BI’s/Intelligent Business benefits.

BI’s Key Performance Indicators reflect the organization’s mission and objectives.

I like the concept of each organization focusing its decision making on its mission and objectives. BI helps significantly to do just that, because executives and management can identify and align Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to the broader organization’s mission, goals, strategies, and culture as well as to each of its business units’ objectives. The magic of BI is that the information displayed can be rolled up or drilled down to specific levels of interest and responsibility within the organization. Let’s say that the COO, who likely would never log into his or her organization’s clinical application, can view a consolidated corporate view or an expanded view of all regions’ or facilities’ clinical KPIs. Likewise, a department head can view his or her specific KPIs benchmarked against department-specific goals.

BI fosters quicker data-driven solutions.

Yes, successful decisions are often based on “hunches”, but in today’s LTPAC world executives and managers have to make and report on specific data-driven KPIs. Before technology truly enabled BI, decisions were often hunches based on information manually extracted from old data, assuming that the information was possibly a trend. It was like trying to drive a car exclusively looking in the rearview mirror. But for businesses to function intelligently with BI, the information needs to be organized and displayed in ways that fosters comprehension, timely quality decisions, and, may I add, accountability. BI also enables managers and executives to retrieve and view data in ways that are specific to their responsibilities and needs.

BI crosses data silos for multi-dimensional views.

Let’s take labor management, for example. For years LTPAC providers have analyzed labor hours and dollars based on hours and dollars per patient per day. Manually, that would mean reconciling time card totals with the census tabulated and reported by the nursing department. However with business-critical enterprise-class software, providers are now using time and attendance applications for labor hours, payroll applications for labor dollars, and clinical applications for the census in aggregate, by payer type, by clinical unit within the facility, and so forth. But each application may be from a different vendor. To get them to talk to each other and to consolidate and convert that data into actionable information instantly requires data mining and BI technology.

BI displays convenient and useful information

BI can also display the information in ways useful to the decision makers. I’ve hinted at this throughout this blog, but the magic to BI is its intelligent use. It starts with identifying and aligning KPIs to the organization’s mission, objectives, strategies, and, yes, culture (but that is a topic for another day). Once selected, KPIs determine how data is be collected, combined into useful information, and displayed in consumable formats. Because the KPI-driven information is available in real time and actionable, executives can make data-driven decisions right now. Now that’s intelligent business.

 

[1] Lest we get off on a tangent here, I am going to use Merriam-Webster as my source for defining “real time”: “the actual time during which something takes place <the computer may partly analyze the data in real time (as it comes in) — R. H. March>.” (Italics added) In this instance, BI generates information in real time as soon as the system has access to the data (as it comes in).  In the case of most of our BI customers, that means refreshing the data available in their respective data warehouses several times a day – as frequently as each customer wants to have its data updated.

 

PRIME CARE TECHNOLOGIES launches the long-term/Post-Acute CARE industry’s MOST COMPREHENSIVE SOLUTIONS PLATFORM

For growth and performance-focused organizations, innovations accelerate results

DULUTH, GA, May 4, 2015 – Prime Care Technologies, Inc., the nation’s leader in technology-powered business solutions for providers of long-term/post-acute care (LTPAC), today announced the launch of a comprehensive solutions platform.

Packed with innovations for LTPAC providers to take financial and operational performance to new heights, the breadth and depth of the platform marks an industry first. Providers can now optimize the right mix of strategic applications, answers, and experts—all running securely in primeCLOUD—to solve some of the industry’s toughest challenges. The lineup is accessed at www.PrimeCareTech.com and includes innovations to:

Reduce costs - primeCOMMERCE, powered by Procurement Partners, provides significant cost cutting through formulary management, invoice automation, central contract compliance, business logic and approval workflows; and more.

Improve cash flow - primeCLAIMS cuts claims processing time up to 35-50% and collects cash faster with an enterprise-class claims solution connected to 3000+ payers.

Optimize a workforce - primeFORCE saves time and money by managing a talent universe in one place.

Drive performance and security - primeCLOUD boosts uptime, performance, and security for the software applications, networks, and devices on which business rely.

Simplify interoperability - primeCONNECT enhances application data sharing within and between healthcare partners to reduce information technology costs, coordinate care, improve quality outcomes, and capitalize on financial incentives.

Measure results - primeVIEW business intelligence provides executives information at their fingertips to make decisions in a centralized dashboard. primeVIEW rolls up key performance data from over twenty-five popular applications under a single login.

“Having the right blend of technology is mission critical for today’s operator,” commented Jim Hoey, CEO of Prime Care Technologies. “Prime Care Technologies suite of solutions is supported by a team of business performance experts who help clients streamline people, processes and technologies to maximize quality of life for patients and residents as well as professional satisfaction for the teams responsible for their experience.”

About Prime Care Technologies, Inc.
Headquartered in Duluth, GA.; and with offices in Eustis, FL; and Brookfield, WI; Prime Care Technologies, Inc. is the nation’s leading provider of technology-powered business solutions for providers of long-term/post-acute care. Clients rely on these technologies and experts to optimize financial performance for procurement, claims, workforce, cloud-IT, connectivity, business intelligence, and more. Having the right information, to make the right decisions, right now—results in tens of thousands of dollars in dividends per location per year. For more information, visit www.PrimeCareTech.com.  

# # #

Likely you read the article in the November 14, 2014 McKnight’s Daily Update entitled, SNF staffing data will be submitted quarterly, payroll vendors might be responsible, CMS officials say, which reported that CMS has launched a pilot to solicit information directly from providers’ payroll systems. The crux of the matter is the lack of confidence in the accuracy of the information providers are reporting to CMS annually to comply with Five Star Rating information requests.

Further, in a previous McKnight’s article, dated November 13, 2014, entitled 80% of nursing homes report misleadingly high staffing levels, Center for Public Integrity claims, the Center for Public Integrity claims that “more than 80% of skilled nursing facilities might have inflated registered nurse staffing levels on the Nursing Home Compare website.” I have a hard time believing that reported registered nurse staffing levels were double that which Medicare cost reports reveal. If that is the case, some providers must be extremely short sighted. Or the investigative journalists at CPI don't know how to read cost reports. The New York Times further fanned the flames of controversy by claiming that providers “ramp up” their staffing levels before a known inspection, allegedly using that time period as the sample for reporting purposes. These two articles seem to indicate that providers have two issues to deal with when it comes to reporting labor information, e.g., accuracy and integrity.

Technology can ensure reporting accuracy and timeliness

So what’s a provider to do? Assuming providers have integrity, let’s discuss accuracy. In the past, when I was running buildings, I had to collect the data and create the reports manually, cross-checking multiple times to make sure the reports were accurate - a laborious, tedious, and time-consuming task. Providers today, however, have a much easier and time-saving alternative - automated data mining and business intelligence (BI). Retrieving, compiling, and repurposing the data into useful, relevant, timely, accurate, and actionable information is fully automated through data mining and BI technologies. The data comes directly from the provider’s time and attendance and payroll systems, combined with its clinical and financial software. The BI tool retrieves that data and stores it in a data warehouse from which it creates reports usually viewable in a dashboard. Further, the reports can be as “real time” as the provider needs them to be. As soon as an employee punches in or out that data is stored and therefore information can be retrieved and reported throughout the day.

Business Intelligence can be a tool to use to take action, to make sure that labor is compliant with budgetary and regulatory requirements. It can also be a reporting tool readily disseminating accurate reports to stake holders, managers, and even to regulatory agencies. Even better, such BI tools already exist, such as our primeVIEW dashboard. With it providers throughout the day are able to view staffing levels, observe overtime, identify who’s on the clock and who’s not, review part-time employee hours, and assess labor trending. It can also generate the CMS 671 report for the Long Term Care Facility Application for Medicare and Medicaid. This kind of rich reporting goes beyond CMS requirements and has proven useful to providers across the country to help them save money and improve business processes.

If you haven’t already, I encourage you to look into Business Intelligence to not only run your business, but to comply with such reporting requirements as CMS will mandate for all providers. Through business intelligence, such information is accessible, accurate, and painless…well, at least the process is; the results may not be. But that is why you want BI in the first place. Address the pain before it gets out of hand. But that is for another blog posting.