It is no surprise that, in the current economic crunch, healthcare providers are facing their own financial hardships. As these providers are being pulled in many directions while facing the need to provide high-quality healthcare at competitive costs, many are struggling to do what they’re supposed to do without risking dissatisfaction. Factors ranging from lower reimbursement rates to a slow-down in service due to overcrowded emergency rooms only add to the issues. Healthcare providers are called upon to provide what is literally a life-or-death product, and because of lower reimbursement rates and budgets that are already stretched tight, these services can’t always be provided in a prompt manner. This doesn’t just include large insurance providers, but hospitals, healthcare practices and individual medical practitioners as well.

A rise in cost is always a concern, not just for the provider, but for the consumer as well. In an inundated market such as healthcare, the need is not necessarily for an expansion in customers or services offered, but a streamlining of the business model in order to add to the bottom line. Paul D. Mango of McKinsey & Company states that “Income statements of the hospitals have been ailing. The cure? Serious attention to Operating Efficiency.” Business Intelligence (BI) is needed to help define metrics and measure performance, as well as to take corrective action to improve the bottom line. By organizing and analyzing available data through data warehousing, healthcare providers can find where corrective action is needed to prevent this unnecessary loss of income, overcoming that financial hardship and providing more efficient and life-saving services.

Healthcare Organization Objectives and Metrics

In order to maintain quality and integrity of service, each industry puts forth a series of objectives and milestones to meet. By meeting these milestones and objectives, an industry can track its own productivity as well as managing processes and determining which produce the necessary results and which might need to be adapted. Within the healthcare industry, these objectives take on a new importance, as it’s not just mechanical parts and processes that these metrics measure, but human lives.

In his book, The Data Model Resource Book, Len Silverton includes the following as performance objectives for the healthcare industry:

o Effective treatment of patients.
o Reimbursement for treatments.
o Reduction of administrative costs.
o Effectively record and track patients’ medical history
o Efficient management of health care delivery schedules for practitioners as well as patients

These objectives are benchmarks of effective and streamlined service that results in not only satisfied customers, but healthy clients. Efficient management and analysis of records and other patient-related data results in a number of cost-savings that help healthcare providers achieve these necessary objectives.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are also a thorough form of measurement when it comes to efficiency, service and effectiveness. While performance objectives have a more general scope, KPIs narrow in on a specific focus within an industry, assigning an acceptable numeric value to each goal. Sample KPIs for the healthcare industry, as mentioned by industry-expert Jamie Wyatt , may include:

o Average length of stay
o Maintained bed occupancy
o FTEs per adjusted occupied bed
o Case-mix index
o Monthly surgical cases (outpatient and inpatient)
o Inpatient and outpatient revenues
o Cost per adjusted patient day (outpatient and inpatient)
o Percentage of revenue from charitable sources
o Revenue and expense per physician
o Margin per department
o Admitting-process performance

There are also performance metrics that can be used as benchmarks for tracking performance. These can be broken down into categories, such as:

o Emergency Room
 Door to Provider Time
 Admission to Provider Time
 Length of Stay
 Wait Time for Ambulances
 Throughput (Urgent/Non-Urgent)
 Triage to Initial Assessment
 Bed Turnover
 Staff Applied To Each Type of Patient
 Type of Cases
o Operating Room
 Utilization Rates
o Customer Satisfaction
 Wait Times
 Quality of Physician
 Cleanliness
 Food Taste
o Learning And Growth
 Licenses Updates
 Continuing Physician Credentials
 Interaction with Patients

Similar metrics can be applied to the financial side of

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