How does business intelligence apply in healthcare?

Today data is considered a wonderland of endless possibilities. Data gives businesses the power to understand the targeted demographic in ways that were not possible a few decades ago. When powered by business intelligence solutions, this data can completely steer businesses in the direction of growth.

One such industry that now gathers a lot of data is healthcare. What’s interesting about healthcare is that it generates massive data related to variables such as patients, staff, labs, appointments, electronic health records, X-rays and scans, diagnosis statistics, pharmacy, memberships and so on. However, not all of this data has helped healthcare organizations to really use it for better healthcare delivery.

If hospitals and healthcare enterprises had to classify this data, it would have three categories: financial, operational and clinical. Healthcare enterprises need business intelligence in order to organize this data for achieving goals such as better healthcare delivery, outcomes management, improvement of clinical process and performance, reduction of cost and resources and so on.

What benefits does BI have for healthcare?

1. Improving care and lowering costs

When healthcare professionals get easy access to patient data, they can create a variety of categories and reports based on the patient’s demographic. But this happens only through business intelligence software. This combination helps in getting to accurate diagnosis and prognosis leading to better resource management and hence improved care for the patients. Through BI software, hospitals and large healthcare organizations are able to keep a logical track of resources thus reducing wastage and cost. For example, Jefferson Medical Center applied a BI software with the objective of measuring employee productivity since it was directly related to patient care. In addition, the hospital was receiving 48,000 patients in ER with a major portion of being low-income patients and was constantly trying to invest in new healthcare technology and improve its services. When they applied a BI software, the system could easily pull data from its patient accounting software, payroll software etc. The hospital was able to compare its own internal metrics with national averages since the software also integrated with third-party sources like US benchmarking data.

2. Improved patient safety and reduction of medical errors

Patient safety is directly related to the ability of a healthcare organization in taking the right decisions at the right time. And this cannot happen without organizing, understanding and analyzing patient data. Business intelligence software enables the correct treatment procedures for patients, hence ensuring their safety since each medical decision is backed by data. Similarly, when clinical processes are streamlined with the help of correct data management, chances of medical errors are reduced.

3. Avoiding waste, better margins

The whole point of business intelligence solution is to be able to analyze and predict the various areas where resources are required and how they are allocated. The logic behind such software is to apply the right resources at the right time. This helps in eliminating wastage. At the same time, costs incurring to treatment per diagnosis, pharmaceuticals, lab equipment can be reduced to a great extent. This helps healthcare organizations to have improved margins since they are able to cater to a larger patient base more confident with the correct allocation of resources.

Business intelligence delivers analysis from multiple sources at once. As a result, healthcare organizations are able to see clearly which are the most efficiently running practices and how they are being measured. BI helps these organizations to identify anomalies and risk factors for better business decisions. Similarly, reports can be generated for patient data such as clinical outcomes, patients’ waiting time, complaints, services delivered, patient functionality etc. This is valuable information for any forward-thinking healthcare organization that wishes to stand out among millennial customers.

BeyondKey has been delivering business intelligence consulting services for healthcare for over a decade now. We have the right kind of technical expertise that blends perfectly well with healthcare as a domain. Our consulting services help organizations apply BI software in the most convenient and logical way possible.