Ballarat Base Hospital - Business Intelligence Systems - Case Study Example

Executive Summary In Ballarat Base Hospital, the existing information systems are not 100% effective and they do not provide a fully integrated and state of the art hospital information system. Operational and performance dashboards can enable would enable quick or real time access to data and help in managing the hospital. Introduction Ballarat Base Hospital is an extremely complex institution that has large units and departments, which coordinate care for a large number of patients. As a result, there is need to improve the quality of patient care and their safety. This can be attained by business intelligence systems such as performance and operational dashboards. Background Ballarat Base Hospital deals with a large number of patients and hence there is need to implement different softwares for decision support to support the different care process steps such as prevention, diagnosis, treatment, monitoring, and follow- up. Currently, the information systems in Ballarat are computer based but they are not up to date and they can be improved further using business intelligence systems such as operational and performance dashboards. The hospital is headed by a chief executive officer who is assisted by the Director governance and risk management, Director foundation and fundraising, Manager, Population Health & Strategic Planning & Manager Media and Communications. There are different heads for different departmental units under these managers. The decision structure in the hospital is semi structured as the heads of the hospital and different departments use the current information data, however, unknown and known variables usually influence their final decision. Not all the inputs, procedure, and outputs are defined. The operational and performance dashboards would support the decision making process of the hospital as they would easily analyze the overall performance of the hospital, estimate the likely impact upon a hospital ability to deliver medical services, and automatically detect the errors or anomalies. This would help the decision makers to easily identify areas that are doing well and those that need improvement hence making the decision making process fast and easy. DSS/BI Solution Dashboards resulted from the convergence and evolution of classical decision support systems, executive information systems, business intelligence, and data warehouses (Ezzelle, Rodriguez & Darden et al. 2008). They represent an important tool for improving efficiency, accelerating decisions, and reducing errors and oversights in clinical practice (Eckerson, 2006; Egan, 2006). In Ballarat Base Hospital, the performance and operational dashboards would play a major role in assisting the management in quality improvement and performance monitoring processes. The dashboards would offer the management the input required to provide effective health services. As a result, graphical user interfaces display graphics (pie charts, bar charts etc), as well as gauges (with different colors) in a framework similar to a portal to draw attention to important information (Sloane, Rosow, & Adam, 2006). They are built to follow the flows in the hospital practices, which they screen. Operational dashboards track every hospital function. Examples include elective surgery dashboards, inpatient dashboards, emergency department dashboards, and ambulance dashboards. All these dashboards can assist the management, staff, and clinicians to manage and monitors the flow of patients in the inpatient and emergency department units. The dashboards may also track functions such as human resources, informational technology, and patient relationship management. The information technology department are the enablers whereas the department units would be the driver. Dashboards offer a powerful and distinct means of communicating information with various benefits (Liang, Xue & Berger, 2006). The information presented in a dashboard consists of a combination of graphics and text. To effectively design dashboards, there are various requirements that should be considered (Selby, 2005). Supporting diverse metric sets for diverse objectives and context help assistance Enabling project and organization level displays, hyperlinks which display tabular formats for the underlying data as well as hyperlinks to access or “drill down” hierarchically to more in depth information Defining points of contact, which identify individuals responsible for follow-up and feedback, data trends, as well as the date via which the data are current, upper, and lower control limits and hyperlinks, which display outliers. Utilizing various gauges or displays for different data types Highlighting overall metric status using green, yellow or red or similar indicators The figure below is a dashboard screenshot The screenshot is a display of different data types (quality, factors, tests progress, requests progress etc) using the green, yellow or red colors. The indicators, objectives and different dates are also shown in the excel screenshot. Evaluation The dashboards are one of the solutions used in various areas to summarize the key metrics for handling multifaceted businesses to assist with decision-making and management so that the most salient information can be seen at a glance (Farcot & Kades, 2004; Foldy, Biedrzycki & Baker et al. 2004; Baskett, Lerouge & Tremblay, 2008). Dashboards are business intelligence tools used in public health for numerous solutions such as health care, blood management, medical procurement, and disease control and management (Popovich & Watkins, 2006). In Ballarat Base Hospital there is need for dashboards to allow the directors of different units to monitor the operations of their units. By gauging the different operations, the hospital will be able to gauge how well it is performing overall, and improve on areas where there are inefficiencies. Dashboards will allow the hospital to report and capture various data points from every department in the hospital hence offering a snapshot of the overall performance. They will enable the hospital the management to display important information in a manner that will allow fast decisions, better confidence and at reduced costs (Sloane et al. 2005). They will also enable visual performance measures presentation. They will enable the management to discover and correct negative trends. It will provide a means of measuring inefficiencies and efficiencies, allow the alignment of strategies and hospital objectives, save time and enable attainment of total visibility of every system instantly. Conclusion Ballarat base hospital provides health care services to a lot of people and also hosts many departments. It uses computer-based systems which are not up to date and which do not make use of business intelligence tools. Incorporating operational and performance dashboards will allow the management of the hospital to gather and process information in order to make the best and timely decisions (Turban, Leidner & Mclean et al. 2006). They will offer a powerful and distinct method of communicating critical information about health care in the hospital to the management, staff, and clinicians so that they can recognize areas to improve so that they can provide effective care to all the patients. Reference List Baskett, L, Lerouge, C & Tremblay, M 2008, Using the dashboard technology properly, Health Progress, vol. 89, pp. 16-23. Eckerson, W 2006, Performance dashboards: measuring, monitoring, and managing your business, John Wiley, Hoboken NJ. Egan, M 2006, Clinical dashboards: impact on workflow, care quality, and patient safety, Crit Care Nurs Q, 29,4, pp.354-361 Ezzelle, J, Rodriguez-Chavez, I, Darden J & Stirewalt M et al. 2008, Guidelines on good clinical laboratory practice: bridging operations between research and clinical research laboratories, J Pharm Biomed Anal, 46,1, pp.18-29 Farcot, R & Kades, T 2004, Digital dashboard technology visualize the possibilities, Decision support and analysis volume VII, In: Proceedings of the CBI/SCIP, Philadelphia, USA. Foldy, S, Biedrzycki, P, Baker, B & Swain, G et al 2004, The public health dashboard: a surveillance model for bioterrorism preparedness, J. Public Health Manag Pract, 10, pp. 234-40. Liang, H, Xue, Y& Berger, B 2006, Web-based intervention support system for health promotion, Decis. Support Syst, 42, pp.435-449. Popovich, M & Watkins, T 2006, Applied medical & care computnetics to public health disease surveillance and management: leveraging external data sources - a key to public health preparedness, St Heal T, 3, pp. 151-61. Sloane, E, Rosow, E, Adam, J & Shine, D 2006, JEDI - an executive dashboard and decision support system for lean global military medical resource and logistics management. In: Proceedings of the 28th IEEE EMBS Annual International Conference, New York City, USA. Turban, E, Leidner, D, Mclean, E & Wetherbe, J 2006, Information Technology for Management: Transforming Organisations in the Digital Economy, 5th ed, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ. Read More