EMR/EHR Blazing A Path For BI

For most of last year I did Business Intelligence (BI) consulting in the consumer goods industry, hence the long time between my last post and now. So for my first post of the new year, and probably many more posts throughout the year, I will highlight EMR/EHR implementation and BI.

As some of the EMR implementation goals are now beginning to be realized and providers becoming more prepared to handle electronic records, BI possibilities are emerging. Healthcare providers can utilize BI strategies to not only improve business practices, but also improve patient care.

KLAS released an in-depth report, “Business Intelligence: Making Cents of Performance,” including research on market trends, BI needs, and vendor performance. Healthcare IT News summarized the key findings as follows:

• The ‘pay for performance’ model and other reforms will force hospitals to more carefully analyze performance measures to identify inefficiencies, quality gaps, supply chain inadequacies and overall performance metrics.
• Although enterprise BI solutions are growing in acceptance, industry-agnostic solution vendors are still making a good showing in healthcare.
• Using BI to make key decisions is just the beginning; providers need their analytics solutions to help them perform predictive analysis with a reasonable level of confidence.

I’ll explore the current state of BI and EMR/EHR based on the key findings by KLAS in upcoming posts.

Envelope Please?

Back in 2009, when President Obama signed the Recovery Act that contained a number of healthcare provisions, including the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), we all heard naysers say “this wouldn’t reduce the cost of health care,” “only a few, or better yet, the well endowed practices could implement EHR before the deadline,” and ”this would reduce the number of practicing physicians because of the demanding requirements and surrounding meaningful use.” Well it’s been a little over 3 years, and by all measures HITECH has exceeded expectations.

Ezekiel Emanuel in a Reuters article, An unsung victory in healthcare, reported:

It’s now been a year since the administration released the regulations specifying meaningful use and what it takes to be certified — the nuts and bolts of implementing the law. The results have been nothing short of spectacular.

As of December 2011, the use of EHR among office-based physicians has nearly doubled to 34 percent with e-prescribing exceeding 40 percent. Over 41,000 physicians have received more than $575 million in incentive payments. Going electronic will allow physicians to more closely track patients, especially the chronically ill, enabling the seamless exchange of data across multiple physicians, hospitals and other providers.

The story is much the same among hospitals: 35 percent have adopted EHRs, and nearly 2,000 of the 4,700 hospitals have, collectively, received more than $2 billion in incentive payments. Every month has surpassed the previous month as measured by the number of physicians and hospitals that have signed up with the government for the EHR program, suggesting that these numbers will continue to rise.

Another great byproduct of the law is that the entire healthcare IT industry has been refocused away from developing new, improved ways for physicians and hospitals to code and bill the insurance industry and the government for payment. Instead, they now focus on making electronics work to improve care, enhance coordination among physicians and facilitate physician-patient communication.

HITECH has presented an myriad of IT opportunities, i.e. data warehousing, business intelligence, EHR implementations, etc. so this is great news for those of us in the IT industry. However, it’s even better news for those of us who will be patients because improving patient care while controlling costs is the corner stone imperative for implementing EHR.

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.