How to Evaluate and Implement
Business Analytics for Your Laboratory"
Dennis Winsten Hal Weiner
Dennis Winsten & Associates, Inc Weiner Consulting Services, LLC Tucson, AZ Eugene, OR
Notice of Faculty Disclosure
In accordance with ACCME guidelines, any individual in a position to influence and/or
control the content of this ASCP CME activity has disclosed all relevant financial
relationships within the past 12 months with commercial interests that provide products and/or services related to the content of this CME activity.
The individuals below have responded that he/she have no relevant financial relationship(s) with commercial interest(s) to disclose:
Dennis Winsten, MS, FHIMSS, FCLMA Hal Weiner, BS, MBA
What is Business Analytics (BA)? Why is it important for the lab?
Examples of use
Considerations for evaluating BA How do you implement?
Vendors in the market? Questions
Determine the potential value and benefits of business analytics for your laboratory.
Assess and evaluate the characteristics and capabilities of various BA alternatives
Describe the key differentiators in selecting the best fit business analytics system for your laboratory
o Business Analytics (BA) is a set of computer-based tools that provide organized, well structured and understandable views of laboratory operational and financial data.
o BA refers to a variety of software applications used to analyze an
organization's raw data. BA, as a discipline, is made up of several related activities, including data mining, online analytical processing, querying and reporting..
o BA is the set of techniques and tools for the transformation of raw data into meaningful and useful information for business analysis purposes.
o The goal of BA is to allow for the easy interpretation of large volumes of data allowing for quicker and better management decisions.
Characteristics of BA
• Software that works with your LIS
• Extracts and organizes existing laboratory data
and presents it in useful, actionable formats
• Provides snapshots of sorted and categorized
data indicating comparisons and trends
BA systems may contain one or more of the following
capabilities:
• Extraction and reformatting of laboratory data
• Multidimensional aggregation and allocation
• Normalization of disparate common data
• Realtime reporting with analytical alert
• Statistical inference and probabilistic simulation
• Key performance indicators monitoring
With reduced reimbursement, laboratories are under increasing pressure to optimize business practices, improve utilization and cut costs. BA can greatly assist management to better understand their laboratory operations and make well founded, prudent decisions to meet laboratory objectives. BA can assist in creating value propositions for patients and MD’s. It can help strengthen relationships, improve quality and monitor service levels.
BA UTILIZATION PERCENT
Recognize need to implement 12 Developing strategy to implement 22 Concrete plans to implement 32 Implementation underway or completed 36
•
The following are examples of types of
dashboards and reports that have been
provided by various BA companies.
Alerts and Predictive Analytics on Physician Behavior
Thyroid Utilization Dashboard
Physician Code / Month, Year of Order Date
01795
Augu Septembe October 2011
November 2011 December 2011
January 2012 February 2012 March 2012
April 2012 May 2012 June 2012 July 2012 August 2012
September 2012 October 2012
November 2012 December 2012
January 2013 February 2013 March 2013
April 2013 May 2013 June 2013 July 2013 August 2013
September 2013 October 2013
November 2013 December 2013
January 2014 February 2014 March 2014
April 2014 May 2014 June 2014 July 2014 August 2014 September 2014 0 50 100 Co 35 25 35 15 25 25 25 35 25 15 45 35 19 28 28 29 28 18 19 19 29 29 28 29 19 19 28 29 39 28 18 17 13 13 37 43 33 27 27 17 33 23 33 23 23 23 13 13 17 33 23 33 23 17 33 27 20 20 30 20 40 20 10 20 30 40 20 14 34 34 14 34 34 42 22 32 22 32 32 42 32 31 21 21 21 31 31 11 21 31 21 31 31 21 21 11 21 31 31 21
Utilization Overview - Thyroid
Physician C..
Test Name
FREE T4 INDEX T3 UPTAKE TSH 46049 48182 01795 04957 81418 00494 50303 46957 12474 33620 02778 56335 02535 00000 1,235 508 785 2,208 259 3,983 2,585 1,395 682 2,560 5,182 1,743 2,175 138 146 160 162 168 172 184 188 193 318 431 1,311 1,800 83 146 158 129 132 167 183 81 142 318 429 248 1,283 1,057 772 772
Count of T3, T4, & TSH - by Physician
Requisition .. Order Date
Test Name / Physician Code
FREE T4 INDEX 01795 T3 UPTAKE 01795 TSH 01795 P4076232 2/7/2014 7:05:00 PM P4076247 2/7/2014 7:10:00 PM P4076251 2/7/2014 7:11:00 PM P4076284 2/7/2014 7:21:00 PM P4076291 2/7/2014 7:22:00 PM P4125966 2/12/2014 6:04:00 PM P4145828 2/14/2014 6:26:00 PM P4176567 2/17/2014 7:55:00 PM P4186213 2/18/2014 8:05:00 PM P4196755 2/19/2014 8:44:00 PM P4207193 2/20/2014 10:00:00 PM P4246466 2/24/2014 6:53:00 PM P4256821 2/25/2014 8:23:00 PM P4276413 2/27/2014 8:38:00 PM 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Detailed Physician Analysis Physician Code
01795
Test Name
FREE T4 INDEX T3 UPTAKE TSH
Monitor trends in test utilization by physician to identify ordering issues
COURTESY OF TABLEAU
A B
Deliver quality performance in a sustainable manner
Analyzing Performance and Use of Reference Partners
01
Improved TAT from ED so that STAT’s no longer need to beordered, while reducing order entry errors by 22%
Counseled MD’s who ordered inappropriate Cardiac Panels and Genetic Cancer Panels about best practice protocols, saving $120,000 per year
02
Reduced supply order usage by 18% thru evaluating MD’s who ordered supplies but not tests
.
03
Improved revenues and profitability by 9% through
monitoring MD ordering patterns vs diagnosis and payor
04
Improved customer service satisfaction by 61% by monitoring key indicators by client
.
- Database-do you have to alter yours?
- Is your DB used for accessing data or is a separate BA
DB created?
- What data sources can be tapped, e.g. databases
(Oracle, SQL, Caché), Excel, Web pages, etc?
- Where does the DB reside? Cloud? Servers at your lab?
- How frequently is the BA DB updated? Realtime? Hourly?
Daily?
- How secure is your data?
- What is the scope of BA? Financials. e.g. revenue by client? Operating data, e.g. TAT, utilization, quality, outreach services?
- Clinical results?
- What is the granularity of the BA data-sufficient detail?
- How easy is it to create BA query templates?
- How much staff time required to set up BA? To support changes to BA for lab staff, I.T. staff? Will you require a DBA?
- Alerts based on rules (Limits, ranges, Boolean logic, etc.) with link to backup data triggering alert
Traditional Projects
• Process-Centric
• Definable
requirements
• Stable requirements
• Value often
quantifiable
BA Projects
• Data-centric
• Unknown
requirements
• Evolving
requirements
• Value often difficult
to quantify
o The level of commitment and sponsorship of the project from laboratory management
o The level of the laboratory’s need for creating a BA implementation
o The amount and quality of laboratory data available
o Budget sufficiency to license/subscribe, install and support a BA system
o Staff availability to implement and support BA operations and support provided by BA vendor
Establishing a need for an investment in BA:
o Reporting needs to be done manually in Excel–and it’s time
consuming – takes weeks not seconds
o Difficulty pulling and joining data from multiple data sources
o Inability to access and utilize the data collected to see
insights to help identify root causes of performance issues
o Need for visualization of data in real-time
• Phased Approach: BA systems are launched within your hospital,
department by department, until the entire hospital has access. This may extend to client access as well.
• Immediate Implementation: Your hospital is in dire need of BA and wants
to implement an effective business Analytics solution immediately.
• Executive Dashboards: The BA project is limited to those at the C-level to
offer a real-time and big-picture look at how the hospital is performing.
• OEM, Embedding : BA is added to a current software choice such as an LIS
within your hospital to expand functionality.
• Clients Only: Only end users are provided with BA tools to perform
self-service reporting and provide your laboratory the opportunity to illustrate KPIs and individual successes to clients
o Data sources-how many? What types?
o Data size, complexity (structured or unstructured) and location
(multiple sources)
o The number of people running queries at the same time
o The number of licenses needed
Top Level Leadership – MUST HAVE
–Set commitment, direction, enforcement of standards and goals –“Leadership and approval”
IT Leadership
–Data Experts working together on data definitions, standards, and delivery. –Emerging roles:
•Data Stewards, Chief Analytics Officer –“Knowledge and standards”
Working Team
–Partnership of analyst and lab management on single goal:
SUBSCRIPTION
• Minimal upfront cost
• Typically, SaaS – resident in the “Cloud”
• Annual renewals – option to discontinue if unsatisfactory
• Support and maintenance costs built into the annual subscription cost • Minor and major upgrades are included in the subscription cost
LICENSING
• Substantial Upfront cost
• Annual fees of 18% to 20% of the initial purchase price for support,
releases and upgrades
• Software operates on your servers, under your control • Potential for integration with other applications
