Healthcare Business Intelligence, + Website

Increasing regulatory pressures on healthcare organizations have created a national conversation on data, reporting and analytics in healthcare. Behind the scenes, business intelligence (BI) and data warehousing (DW) capabilities are key drivers that empower these functions. Healthcare Business Intelligence is designed as a guidebook for healthcare organizations dipping their toes into the areas of business intelligence and data warehousing. This volume is essential in how a BI capability can ease the increasing regulatory reporting pressures on all healthcare organizations.

• Explores the five tenets of healthcare business intelligence
• Offers tips for creating a BI team
• Identifies what healthcare organizations should focus on first
• Shows you how to gain support for your BI program
• Provides tools and techniques that will jump start your BI Program
• Explains how to market and maintain your BI Program

The risk associated with doing BI/DW wrong is high, and failures are well documented. Healthcare Business Intelligence helps you get it right, with expert guidance on getting your BI program started and successfully keep it going.

Foreword xi

Preface xiii

Acknowledgments xvii

Chapter 1 Business Intelligence 1

What BI Isn’t 2

Do You Need BI? 3

Healthcare Information Environment 4

Data Modeling 9

The Don’ts 10

Chapter 2 The Tenets of Healthcare BI 13

The Tenets 15

Data Quality 17

Leadership and Sponsorship 22

Technology and Architecture 26

Providing Value 31

Cultural Implications 35

Seeking Equilibrium 35

Chapter 3 Data Quality 39

Data Quality Implications for Healthcare 40

Data Governance 42

Data Profiling 58

Chapter 4 Leadership and Sponsorship 67

Leading a BI Initiative 68

Why Sponsorship Is Critical 80

Chapter 5 Technology and Architecture 101

The “Abilities”: Scalability, Usability, Repeatability, Flexibility 104

Scalability 106

Usability 110

Repeatability 117

Flexibility 130

Chapter 6 Providing Value 135

Creating a BI Team 136

User Adoption 144

The BI User Persona Continuum 149

Six Steps to Providing Value 152

Chapter 7 Gauging Your Readiness for BI 175

Stop 181

Proceed with Caution 186

The Go Stage 191

Chapter 8 Future Trends in Healthcare BI 195

Web 2.0 and Social Media 197

Mobile Technologies for Healthcare BI 204

Analytics: More Than a Buzzword 206

Creating a Data-Driven Organization 208

Big Data and Why It Matters 211

To the Cloud! 212

Chapter 9 Putting It All Together 215

Year One 216

Get Some Support 217

Governance Structure 220

Projects with Value 221

Technology and Architecture Gaps 223

Architectural Gaps 229

Cultural Preparedness 230

Marketing the Program 230

Manage the Inaugural Effort 232

Build Supporting Processes and Infrastructure 234

Train and Deploy 236

Operationalize the BI Function 238

KPIs for Healthcare 239

Departing Thoughts on Healthcare BI 240

Appendix A Data Governance Policies and Procedures 243

Appendix B Business Intelligence Reporting Tool 253

Appendix C Business Intelligence Road Map Template 265

Appendix D Business Intelligence Marketing Plan Template 281

Appendix E Status Report Template 285

About the Website 289

About the Author 291

Index 293

LAURA B. MADSEN, MS, is founder of the Healthcare Business Intelligence Summit and international keynote speaker on healthcare BI. She brings more than a decade of experience in BI and data warehousing for healthcare. Laura leads the Healthcare Practice for Lancet, a leading BI consulting firm headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. At Lancet, she spearheads strategy and product development for the healthcare sector and works with key accounts across the country in the provider, payer, and healthcare manufacturing markets. Prior to joining Lancet, Laura held senior positions with several leading healthcare companies, including UnitedHealth Group. Her responsibilities included leading an enterprise BI project from pre-concept to execution, managing a commercially available suite of BI tools, and advising both business and IT leaders on effective healthcare BI practices.

Praise for Healthcare Business Intelligence

"If you are leading a healthcare business intelligence initiative, you will want this book. If you are new to healthcare business intelligence management, then you need this book. Laura has packed it full of essential information that combines her deep expertise, her wide-ranging experience, and highly useful templates, all wrapped in her conversational style that makes it an easy, satisfying read."
—Scott Wanless
Analytics Practice Director, Cipe Consulting Group, LLC
Author of Business Intelligence and Analytics for Healthcare Organizations

"Many of today's healthcare systems are characterized by unsustainable healthcare inflation and uneven quality and safety. However, a powerful answer to these challenges is the effective use of healthcare business intelligence. Laura Madsen provides a practical and comprehensive resource for both IT professionals and senior executives to guide the creation and operation of a successful BI organization."
—Daniel B. McLaughlin
Director, Center for Health and Medical Affairs
Opus College of Business
University of St. Thomas, Minneapolis, MN

"Healthcare Business Intelligence will be an essential resource for BI practitioners and healthcare leaders alike. This outstanding book provides in-depth coverage of fundamental healthcare BI topics ranging from technology and data models to building effective analytics teams. Laura's extensive experience in the field infuses the solid technical content in this book with practical examples and lessons learned that enable the reader to appreciate and understand the many components and nuances of effective business intelligence. Healthcare organizations will benefit from this book by maximizing the potential of BI and ultimately achieving more effective, efficient, and safer delivery of healthcare services."
—Trevor Strome, MSc, PMP Informatics and Process Improvement Lead, Winnipeg Health Authority Emergency Program Assistant Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba
Founder and Editor of HealthcareAnalytics.info

"Our country's aspirations to reduce the costs of healthcare without undermining quality of care ultimately revolve around the industry's ability to share, integrate, and analyze information. Laura Madsen has done a masterful job making the case for why healthcare providers and payors should invest money in business intelligence and provides practical advice about how to build a business intelligence competency that pays handsome dividends."
—Wayne Eckerson
Principal, BI Leader Consulting

Healthcare, probably more than any other industry, has everything to gain from moving to modern data reporting and analytics systems. Which is why it is so surprising that, on the whole, the industry has been so slow to adopt the business intelligence (BI) programs and data warehousing (DW) systems that drive such functions. In part, this has to do with a lack of knowledge among healthcare business leaders about how a BI program can benefit their organizations and what is involved in building and maintaining one. Written by an author at the forefront of the healthcare BI revolution, Healthcare Business Intelligence fills that knowledge gap.

Not a technical manual or data modeling guide, this book was written for CIOs, IT managers, and other business professionals who want to know more about BI, specifically within a healthcare context. It tells you how to present a strong business case for BI, as well as how to plan, budget, build, and maintain a BI program. And, as no two healthcare organizations are the same, it offers priceless pointers on how to shape a BI program to your organization's unique information needs, data resources, and culture.

Based upon author Laura Madsen's extensive experience modeling BI programs for healthcare institutions and with numerous real-life case studies illustrating the advantages of a well-designed BI program (and the disadvantages of a poorly designed one), this book fills you in on:

• The crucial 5 tenets of healthcare business intelligence
• How to assess your organization's preparedness to adopt BI
• How to build an effective BI team
• The risks associated with getting BI/DW wrong and how to minimize them
• Tools and techniques for jump-starting your BI program
• Developing an effective BI lexicon for use in your organization

Along with a companion website featuring a variety of tools, Healthcare Business Intelligence is an invaluable source of timely information. It offers expert advice, guidance, and powerful tools for healthcare companies that would like to bring their information systems into the new millennium.