Why Develop a Self-Service BI Strategy?

Some organizations with Epic healthcare analytics and healthcare business intelligence (BI) systems continue struggling to provide the analytics needed for financial, operational, or clinical care decisions. If your organization is unable to produce the metrics you need for decision-makers, maybe it’s time to consider a self-service business intelligence strategy (SSBI).

Healthcare facilities that have Epic Systems software may not quite have a fully implemented BI solution to help drive decision-making. These organizations could be lacking critical insights, which might result in lost opportunities for cost savings, efficiency gains, and improved patient outcomes.

Historically, BI solutions required implementing expensive, brand-name systems that rely on a data warehouse. SSBI solutions are less costly and offer more manageable implementations by comparison. However, to deploy an SSBI solution, you’ll need to have a clear understanding of your requirements.

• How many users will you be supporting?
• What is their current skill level working with Big Data?
• How much training is required for them to be effective?
• How much implementation assistance will users need from highly-paid data analysts?
• What type and quality of information are stakeholders expecting the SSBI solution to deliver?
• What do stakeholders expect to gain from an SSBI?
• Do stakeholders, users, and the BI team all agree on the meaning of “self-service?”
• What barriers to user adoption exist that could get in the way of meeting stakeholder expectations?

How does BI better inform stakeholder decisions?

A necessary feature of a worthwhile SSBI system is the capability to collect and organize data from many diverse sources. Then the system must render that data into meaningful information stakeholders and decision-makers can use to make better-informed decisions.

However, to provide distilled, multi-dimensional healthcare information to decision-makers, an SSBI system must have the following capabilities:

• Tools capable of preparing data and meeting data governance standards
• Access to external data
• Simple tools that generate reports and provide analytics
• Scalable and able to manage complicated analytical modeling
• Robust tools for visualization

Some business intelligence examples that demonstrate the benefits of SSBI systems are:

• Collecting and aggregating healthcare data analytics and interpreting the data in new and innovative ways
• Gathering insights into hospital management
• Analyzing patient diagnoses, treatments, and outcomes
• Examining and breaking down treatment and patient costs
• Measuring patient satisfaction, flow, and utilization

How to Develop Your Business Intelligence Strategy

When developing a healthcare SSBI strategy, there are a few critical factors worth considering. They include:

• Reaching an agreement among stakeholders, users, and the BI team on what a self-service BI system provides
• Identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter to stakeholders and users
• Testing proposed solutions among users of varying skill levels – including decision-makers and other stakeholders – to gauge user acceptance
• Refine and revise the tools, training, and implementation strategy as required

Syntrix is a data reporting and business intelligence practice serving organizations in the healthcare industry. As former BI practitioners at major healthcare organizations, our experience and understanding of healthcare industry concerns and trends enable us to guide you in identifying areas of improvement in healthcare delivery.

Contact us online or call 877-308-5872 to discuss your Epic SSBI solution.