Meaningful Use with BI and DW

Data warehousing (DW) and business intelligence (BI) are increasingly becoming more essential for healthcare providers as how best to meet meaningful use requirements.

BI and DW have been pegged as the best method to address the quality reporting requirements spelled out in the meaningful use criteria, according to Laura Madsen (author Business intelligence and the case for meaningful use).

The advantages among Madsen’s key findings to taking a DW/BI approach to meaningful use:

Consistency. DW/BI provides consistency, not just today, but more so for future reporting years as additional tracking and outcomes are driven as a result of higher EHR adoption. BI reporting addresses the complexity of meaningful use requirements.

Reducing FTE time. Creates all required regulatory reports from one source. Defining and governing data becomes quite manageable when there is a single source of the truth, thereby reducing FTE's.

Ability to manage data definitions for a broad set of regulatory requirements. Consistent definitions enable a broader use of data. This often involves self-service BI reporting, and it allows multiple departments to proactively pull reports of measures long before submission, giving you the extra time needed to make process changes and exceed goals.

As more providers adopt meaningful use requirements, they will be force to take a hard look at how they access and aggregate data. DW/BI likely won’t be the only technology adopted, but it will be at the forefront for health care providers as they slice and dice their data to demonstrate meaningful use compliance, and how to improve upon it.