Healthcare IT News - April 2008 - (Page 9)

www.HealthcareITNews.com April 2008 ■ Healthcare it News By John Kitchen, Datawatch Corp. o m m n t r y vasive BI at a fraction of the time, cost and complexity. With report mining, organizations can provide users with actionable information, ready to be sorted and filtered, combined in data tables, summarized into subtotals and grand totals and easily exported – just the way users need it. report mining technology ushers in a new holistic approach to enterprise BI, more accurately described as enterprise Information management (eIm). eIm strives to deliver pervasive BI using all existing enterprise information sources, particularly existing reports, which are typically ignored by traditional BI systems. By the common definition, pervasive BI provides widespread access to information across an enterprise, but what good is the information if it is not useful and actionable, or if security issues and a lack of end-user training mean staff can’t extract the value they’re seeking from BI? report mining is a simple solution to a very complex issue: leverage the investment you’ve already made to get the right information to the right people at the right time. n More at healthcareitnews.com e connect: KItCHeN 0408 Pervasive BI: Worth the trouble, or more trouble than it’s worth? many believe that pervasive business intelligence (BI) represents a “wave of the future”, in which c-level executives are fully supported in their business decision-making by all members in an organization. By connecting users to the appropriate database with sophisticated data visualization tools, pervasive BI would make information available to any staff member looking to analyze it. But does everyone need access to every piece of information? many It professionals, including healthcare executives, mistakenly believe the only way to get enterprise BI into the hands of those who need it is to implement sophisticated BI tools, typically with complicated interfaces and little training on how to effectively use the tools. Furthermore, It still bears the burden of creating and maintaining the data management systems necessary to support BI. In reality, pervasive BI may be more of a headache than it’s worth, with very little incremental company benefit – particularly in light of the unique challenges healthcare organizations encounter. Giving all levels of users this type of universal access presents a multitude of issues, especially when companies use data warehouses or transactional databases as the source for pervasive BI. these challenges range from the scalability and security issues of potentially hundreds, if not thousands, of users banging against such data sources to I n the It Industry today, the likely end-user missteps that may impact performance. Healthcare organizations also need to consider the extensive It support necessary to train end users on the proper use of BI tools, particularly when dealing with complex healthcare application database structures. additionally, a databasecentric approach may hamper a company’s ability to share analyzable information with people outside the immediate enterprise, “While allowing all end users to access information is logical in certain instances, traditional BI tools are OVERKILL for many organizations.” such as employees in distributed offices, customers, vendors or partners—which can ultimately impact clinicians’ ability to best serve their patients. of course, HIPaa is also an omnipresent concern. While allowing all end users to access information is logical in certain instances, traditional BI tools are overkill for many organizations. In most cases, the potential value of BI for lower-level staff does not warrant the time or effort required to extract information out of a transactional database or data warehouse. While traditional data warehouses still play an important role, most organizations have already done the hard work associated with achieving pervasive BI—such as extracting the appropriate data, cleansing it, applying business rules and so on. they’ve done this by creating reports, and by more intelligently utilizing these reports, the whole enterprise can benefit without the strain and complexity of a traditional pervasive BI infrastructure. It is time to consider a more pragmatic approach to achieving the aim of pervasive BI and getting the right information to the right people at the right time. By innovatively bridging BI and enterprise content management, a slightly different approach called report mining can fully utilize the existing reports already produced by an organization’s enterprise information systems. What many executives John Kitchen don’t realize is that their existing reports are their greatest assets, as most knowledge workers already use reports for decision-making purposes. therefore, putting those reports to better use should be a top priority. the problem is that conventional wisdom still says reports cannot be used as a source of BI because they are static; they do not allow the end user to ask questions about the data and see different data views. as a result, the critical information in existing reports often remains “hidden in plain sight.” the “aha factor” for enterprise healthcare executives is that report mining software can unlock information in readonly documents and reports, turning it into live data that delivers on the promise of per- ● John Kitchen is senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Datawatch corp., an enterprise information management company, developers of report mining software, called Monarch. Kitchen can be reached at john_kitchen@datawatch.com. Forget the silver bullets, just take better aim gaining new admissions more quickly and less expensively by analyzing patient flow from initial entry to discharge and We’re always looking for the quick fix, while ignoring integrating process change with technology. this industrial the fact that silver bullets usually misfire (see Penicillin). management approach is uncovering “hidden” existing capacity that can be utilized without large investments. rather than yet the search for one-size-fits-all solutions goes on. take the hospital overcrowding crisis gripping north building new capacity over 3-5 years at a cost of $1 million per america and much of the world. It’s a complex “industrial room, they’re opting to solve their problems now. What we’ve learned in nearly two decades of addressing hosworkflow” problem, with thousands of interacting processes, pital overcrowding is that there is no one way to fix much like manufacturing. Still, while hospitals jump it. What is consistent is the importance of involving to adopt new clinical and diagnostic technologies, your workers in changing processes. For one thing, they’re among the last industries to install informayour employees know the processes better than you. tion technology, including the flow measurement sysFor another, they won’t accept changes unless they tems which can measure performance improvement. own them. When a problem reaches crisis level, many hospithe first step is to measure the key performance tals reach for the quick fix. Some see process change indicators affecting flow by bringing together particias the silver bullet. others believe technology alone pants from disparate disciplines to analyze current can fix everything. Anthony Sanzo processes. next this team must scrutinize available neither approach works. Without knowing what technology can provide, how do you technology to understand how the proper tools can streamline go about eliminating unnecessary manual steps? on the other the manual process. Finally, they must agree on attainable objectives which will hand, overlaying even the best technology on a bad process can eliminate waste and achieve improvement without adding make it worse. money, people, space or inventory. this includes how improveWhat they haven’t learned is the lesson of the model-t. Henry Ford’s “big idea” wasn’t the assembly line. that actu- ment will be measured. Hospitals cannot fix what they cannot ally came from a chicago slaughterhouse, where a Ford man- measure. collecting data routinely is essential. Key indicators ager noticed higher efficiency among workers who removed like eD throughput, inpatient flow, and clinical process can the same animal parts over and over as carcasses moved by on be tracked daily, weekly or monthly, allowing staff to establish benchmarks for current flow. these metrics provide immedia conveyor belt. Ford changed the world by realizing that process change ate feedback on the impact of specific changes. tools like rapid (labor specialization) and technology implementation (con- cycle testing allow staff to test a large number of small changes veyor belts) needed to happen in tandem. one could not have by using small data samples to measure their effectiveness. Sustained improvement must be driven by the people changed without the other. their marriage cut production time involved. the best way for them to believe in change is to let for the model t from a day and a half to an hour and a half. today, some of the world’s most respected hospitals are them see the big picture and understand its logic. they also By Anthony SAnzo, CEO TeleTracking Technologies, Inc. H ealthcare has become addicted to the silver bullet. need to know they aren’t eliminating their own future, so establishing a no-layoff policy supported by natural attrition will allow them to actively engage in process improvement. Just as vital is accountability. one advantage of advanced patient flow automation technology system is its ability to measure user-determined milestones in real time, so performance can be gauged continuously. a key feature is a time stamping function that lets staff know when: 1) a room is vacated; 2) an inpatient bed was requested; 3) a room was assigned to a new patient; 4) the room becomes clean, and; 5) it is ready for a new patient. Since it’s hard fo http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8986 http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8987

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Healthcare IT News - April 2008

Healthcare IT News - April 2008 Contents New Media Push Stepping Down BI Headaches Decision Grants Safety Alerts Summit 08 Growing an EHR Year 24

Healthcare IT News - April 2008

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