Analytics Program - Conceptual Model

Introduction

The current changes in healthcare have prompted a shift in how accessible data has become. Since the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, HITECH, and Meaningful Use, healthcare providers have invested two-fold in electronic health records (EHR’s) to manage patient information. Also considering the shift from fee for service to value based reimbursement models. Physicians and hospitals are now revisiting data to come up with effective solutions in managing their patient population, and effectively rolling out new methods to report care. This change is encouraging health care providers to focus on business intelligence (BI) as the solution to improving their patient population that will reduce costs and help identify areas of opportunity or improvement. The aim of this paper is to develop an analytical platform that can help organizations to successfully leverage data for reporting and improving patient care.

Methods

The process used leverages two methodologies one based on the five tenets of implementing a BI solution which include (Madsen, 2012):

·      Data quality

·      Leadership and sponsorship

·      Technology and Architecture

·      Value

·      Cultural changes

As well as, referencing two key components that include: building awareness and establishing a clear vision, and building clinical informatics expertise (Spooner, Reese, & Konschak, 2012).

Data Quality

The focus on data quality is primarily to invest in training programs that can help end users become good data stewards. Data governance and establishing standards of practice when entering data can lead to a more uniformed process of entering data. This also can improve scalability within the data warehouse of an organization. This would allow for seamless profiling or groupings to research areas of improvement (Madsen, 2012).

Leadership and Sponsorship

As in all successful implementations, c-suite buy in is essential. Particularly those who have more to gain would be more inclined to support a business resolution that essentially can improve profitability. The leadership buy in can also assist in providing necessary resources required for completion of the project.

Technology and Architecture

With regards to technology the fundamentals include a data warehouse, certified EHR, and a user interface with intuitive dashboard capabilities. Outside of these capabilities, architecture which includes BI professionals, IT resources and support center capabilities would be essential in the overall performance of the new process (Madsen, 2012)

Value and Cultural Changes

Value refers to the overall processes that support a successful roll out of the program which include training and planning. As a new rollout of a new program is implemented. Workflow and inefficiencies become a major concern.  According to Kudyba and Rader (2010), facilities can claim to address factors that lead to positive experience. However, as it relates to impacted stakeholders who will essentially support ongoing maintenance a sound transition or plan will need to be established to address any ongoing challenges.

Building Awareness and Establishing a Clear Vision

Since the project is transitioning an entire organization from services based to outcome driven by means of BI. There is a need to essentially share a clear vision on how the data will be used. Considering potential pushback from clinical staff on performance metrics. There will need to be standards established once a baseline is created to how the data will be utilized.

Building Clinical Informatics Expertise

The focus again is workforce to hire the right people who understand and can perform tasks such as data mining and understand clinical decisions support systems. With these new metrics at hand its importance the right staff is brought on board who can work closely with clinical staff to set parameters and expectations (Spooner, Reese, & Konschak, 2012).

Milestones

The project would take a waterfall approach until completion.

Phase 1 3-6 months

Present deliverables to leadership to discuss program implementation and seek support from c-suite. Once support is provided staff expectations, technology expectations, and budget is created move to phase two.

Phase 2 6-12 months

During phase two this would be the most critical phase. We would focus on system design and working closely with assigned team members to create an efficient and successful program that meets the aforementioned requirements. Thereafter, we would rollout the program and implement the new solution to share with team members that will require access to dashboard data and improvement metrics. Since this is a rollout of a new solution we would require a testing period on 1-2 months to ensure quality.

The goals for post implementation of the new solution would be to focus on management of metrics and improved reports. As well as ongoing product improvement and necessary maintenance.

Conclusion

Creating this program would be to focus on quality improvement and delivering a solution that can help improve quality of care. The focus is strongly on workforce, technology, and training. Since BI is not one individual item rather a complex solution that incorporates analytics, warehousing, dashboards and people. This solution presented tries to incorporate all aspects that make up BI. 

References:

Kudyba, S. & Rader, M. (2010). Enhancing Data Resources and Business Intelligence in Healthcare.  In Healthcare informatics: Improving Efficiency and Productivity, Boca Raton, FL:CRC Press

Madsen, L. (2012). Healthcare business intelligence: A guide to empowering successful data reporting and analytics . Hoboken, N.J: Wiley.

Spooner,B., Reese,B., Konschak,C., & Halamka,J. (2012). Accountable care: Bridging the health information technology divide (pp218). Virginia Beach, VA: Convurgent Publishing, LLC.