Healthcare industry has to deal with massive amounts of data. As the world is becoming more data-driven, the need for adopting business intelligence in healthcare organizations is also increasing radically. Healthcare business intelligence technology has garnered massive attention among providers and professionals.

Healthcare information systems such as EHR and EMR can now be seen transforming to business intelligence (BI) tools to:

Optimize processes.
Make better clinical decisions.
Extract meaningful information.
Focus on scarce resources for making changes.

In this article, we will cover:

What is BI?
Benefits of BI
Top BI tools

Watch our webinar on the telehealth toolkit for physicians.

What is Business Intelligence?

Business intelligence incorporates strategies and technologies of business analytics, data mining, data visualization, data tools and infrastructure. It helps organizations make more informed data-driven decisions. In a healthcare practice if you are employing this tool, it will give you a comprehensive view of your practice’s data while also using that data to changes, eliminate inefficiencies, and quickly adapt to market or supply changes.

Healthcare industry in the United States is booming, it is ranked as the top nation in the world when it comes to healthcare expenditures. Physicians have started speculating around the latest BI and data analytics could play to help ease the burgeoning cost.

Almost all the industries such as retail and law enforcement have seen the success and progression growth that comes from utilizing these tools. BI has become a positive outcome for the clinicians and healthcare industry at a whole. In addition to cost management, it also improves patient outcomes which is the most promising and encouraging advantage.

Features of Healthcare Business Intelligence

Modern business intelligence software for healthcare environments integrates many features necessary for medical care into one easy-to-use platform. Some of these core healthcare BI features include:

Data Integration

BI software can integrate and connect with any system that the organization uses and access the full value of their data in one platform. Healthcare BI tools can easily integrate with EHR and EMR systems, accounting tools to provide a holistic view of its operations.

Data Visualization and Dashboards

BI tools display data in graphs and charts on a single screen in an interactive dashboard that is easy to understand. It helps physicians to view patients’ profiles, billing processes, scheduling, etc., all in one place. During bill creation, the tool will auto-fill an account with services from charts, or it will let you view the bill and chart alongside. The tool also shows the operational and financial health of the organization.

Security

Handling sensitive information like financial data and patient data demands strict security. Business intelligence software systems ensure security and quality of data by staying compliant with government rules and regulations like HIPAA.

Read about the five security misconceptions about the cloud based EHRs.

Alerts

BI tools enable healthcare practitioners to automatically receive alerts upon any medication or treatment-related changes made by the patient. The software receives notifications instantly on the change of certain metrics, according to thresholds set manually. This happens through machine learning algorithms that detect anomalies.

Benefits of Healthcare Business Intelligence Software

Deploying BI features will help you analyze important factors of your clinic, such as:

Diagnostics.
Patient feedback.
Finances & billing.
Patient care.

BI software can collect and provide all the information that is indispensable for a productive healthcare system. Following are some of the top benefits that it offers.

Increase Profitability

The most common factor for deploying BI in the healthcare industry is that it improves organizations' bottom line and saves money in many ways. Providers are always on the lookout to cut costs in any way possible. According to a study conducted by McKinsey Global Institute, between $300 to $45o billion annually is saved by the industries that apply business intelligence into their big data systems.

Business intelligence software can:

Identify financial patterns.
Provide insight into patterns that assist with decision-making.
Identify historical spending patterns by day, week, quarter, or year through reporting.
Help with cost and profit margin by predictive analysis.
Find out services that are profitable and underused.
Reduce operating costs by focusing on valuable services.

Access More Data

Healthcare BI software will help you save time and resources that are needed to leverage data. It helps put all your financial data, patient relationship data, and medical records on a single platform. You will be able to see your data in one place without consuming time to switch to different modes. These tools will also give insight to new cutting-edge technology in the medical industry by interpreting medical research from various publications and sources.

Improve Operational Efficiency

Data in your EMR system can reveal things that can impact your practice. Hence make sure before implementing healthcare business intelligence tools that it can do the following:

Identify operational inefficiencies.
Stay updated across all systems.
Highlight the latest trends in the analysis.
Monitor healthcare KPIs.
Optimize operations.
Increased productivity through efficient processes.
Share data across organizations.

Improved Patient Care

The ultimate goal of any healthcare organization is to provide better outcomes for their patients through effective treatment.

BI software will improve patient care by:

Running analysis on the data collected of your patient medical history.
Compile all the data from disparate sources.
Identify and track patients' progress, treatment, tests, etc.
Individualized patient care that is accurate, comprehensive, and scalable.

Better treatment means happier patients and increased business referrals.

Importance of BI

Top Business Intelligence Software Tools

If your system is underperforming, then now is the time to start looking for a solution!

Let us go through a list of the top five BI tools for healthcare organizations:

Power BI

A data analytics and data visualization platform by Microsoft. It has the top pick for organizations for its scalability, cost-effectiveness, and ease of use. Suited for all sizes, from small to corporate enterprises. It helps businesses in the following functions:

Gain insights to bridge the gap between data & decision making.
Supports more than 120 data connectors with on-premises & cloud data sources.
Integrates seamlessly with Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint, and Azure.
Data analysis and visualization in customizable reports.

Sisense

Sisense is a platform designed to make end-to-end data discovery and analytics accessible to all users. It uses single-stack technology and is available for all sizes. It helps businesses in the following functions:

Data preparation, analysis, and visualizations.
Faster results from massive amounts of data for quicker decisions.
Built specifically to analyze healthcare data.
Straightforward integration with ERP and billing software.
Built for a variety of deployment models.

Tableau

Tableau is known for helping businesses create dashboards from their data. It helps businesses in the following functions:

Optimize data for better patient experiences.
Gives results through visual analytics.
Offers easy navigation via the drag-and-drop filter and natural language queries.
Offers both SaaS and self-hosted deployment models.

Qlik Sense

Qlik Sense is a next-generation advancement of the self-service data analytics platform. It employs artificial intelligence and an exclusive associative engine to empower proactive data-driven decision-making. It helps businesses to:

Combining all the data and exploring it through various options to find answers to critical questions.
A modern, cloud-based BI platform with a multi-cloud architecture.
Offering flexible deployment options.

Diver Platform

Diver Platform is a complete end-to-end suite of data analytics tools inviting users to “dive” into ad hoc analysis and self-service data discovery. It helps businesses in:

Centralizing information from disparate data sources into a single database
Analyzing massive data
Develop dashboards to help users understand and communicate the value of data

Are you aware of the five steps for easy credentialing for a new medical practice?

Conclusion

In the healthcare industry, having access to the right business intelligence tools will capitalize on operational and patient data stockpiles.

It is not only about maintaining business efficiency; patient care and outcomes directly impact these decisions.

Since the advent of an EMR software solution system, leveraging an unprecedented amount of data has never been easy and simpler. Therefore, a healthcare system that has invested in business intelligence is sure to reach its goals.

For more information/help or a FREE consultation, reach out to our EHR Consultants now!

Importance of Business Intelligence in the Healthcare Industry

EMR Vendor Selection Template