Amalgamating Disparate Systems and Creating a Long-Term BI Strategy for an Emergency Healthcare Company
"We were very impressed with the quality and the knowledge of the team members. WCI provided more of a collaborative approach and was open to listening and solving problems together. It was not just a technical conversation, they always had our goals in mind."
– CIO, Emergency Healthcare Company
Situation
The company (specializing in emergency care) partners with large medical care providers to build micro emergency rooms that excel in providing exceptional service. The emergency healthcare company’s mission is to provide the best care for its patients and business intelligence (BI) plays a huge role in making this a reality.
The emergency healthcare company uses BI in several ways throughout the organization; ranging from reports for executives to getting insight for better patient care to discovering ways that increase operational efficiency. BI is prevalent in every corner of their business, yet with the rapid growth in the last few years data reporting had reached a barrier of accessibility and they saw the need to reach the next step of their innovative vision.
As a result of their rapid growth in the number of facilities across many regions, standardization of reporting was necessary. The emergency healthcare company had multiple systems and methods of reporting where there was no single source of truth. Key indicators that should be consolidated and consistent were being reported differently by departments. The IT department acted as an intermediary and took requests to create reports that were needed. This resulted in time being wasted on communication and translation of technical information.
Their goal was to empower its employees and decentralize BI so that end users could have hands-on access to data and discover what’s relevant to them at their function.
Instead of just finding a tool to solve the problem, the emergency healthcare company wanted to embrace innovation and disrupt the space they were in. They set out to look for a partner that could guide them through a long-term Business Intelligence strategy which took into account current needs and future growth.
WCI Consulting emerged as a knowledge center and practitioner for advisory, best practices solution implementation and strategic visioning for their future BI state. By merging the needs of the company with the right tools sets WCI set off to create the best BI strategy for an emergency healthcare company.
Solution
I appreciated the experience and knowledge in the healthcare industry from WCI. We had an aggressive timeline of 6 months. WCI came in with a turnkey approach and was able to deliver
– CIO, Emergency Healthcare Company
The emergency healthcare company had a goal to be the best in emergency care. To achieve their goal they knew they needed to be innovative by empowering end users with technology. One particular goal was to remove the time consuming manual reporting that continuously led to reactive decisions. An objective was to put power in the hands of the nurses and doctors who could run a report on the spot to make decisions based on accurate data.
WCI brought immediate expertise in BI best practices. Building the right foundation for the emergency healthcare company to grow its data platform was paramount. The end result was a consolidated data platform that enabled them to view and act on data from across the organization and various markets.
Success
Increased Operational Efficiency
The emergency healthcare company went from a lot of manual, repetitive work to an automated solution. The month-end close reporting process became more efficient. Now they are able to eliminate the hassles and get an immediate report to close within a few days.
End User Adoption
The new BI systems removed layers of complexity and increased speed when it comes to decision making as the end users can now run reports with one click.
Knowledge Transfer
WCI is very experienced in the BI environment and from the beginning set the expectation that the emergency healthcare company would be able to manage the environment after the end of the project. By taking the time to properly train the healthcare team, the inside staff now successfully runs the system on their own.
Executive Engagement
In developing executive dashboards for several of its joint venture partners, the emergency healthcare company is providing innovation in reporting of its key hospital and emergency department indicators.
“A lot of the executives are much more engaged in BI. WCI provided a visual type of environment so now they are excited about it and they can see information in a concise way.”
– CIO, Emergency Healthcare Company
Focus on Analytics vs Reporting
The shift away from a reactive approach has begun. They are no longer is focused on reporting after the fact. They now have a platform to look at data from an analytical standpoint and see the big picture.
“WCI is a very high-quality company. Because WCI is nimble, they are able to adjust quickly to their client’s needs. We know that they have national clients with relationships that span for multiple years and now we can see why.”
– CIO, Emergency Healthcare Company