Our health care system is only as good as the sum of its parts. That means we have to ensure each of our OSF HealthCare facilities, departments and Mission Partners are performing to the top of their abilities, both clinically and economically. But how do we know who is achieving goals? How do we find opportunities for improvement?
Healthcare Analytics, a part of OSF Innovation, collaborates with leaders across the Ministry to create dashboards and explorers that pull and refine complex data. The information gathered from these tools helps executives, managers and providers make informed decisions about everything from operations to patient experience.
For many years, OSF HealthCare used external software to view charge codes and detailed department-level data for all hospitals in the organization. This information is used to measure financial performance in each hospital department.
“This analytics platform wasn’t very intuitive,” said Eliza Montgomery, a senior financial analyst for OSF HealthCare. “You couldn’t just point and click to build a report. You had to have a couple of days of training and a little bit of programming knowledge to operate that tool.”
In 2016, Healthcare Analytics built the Hospital Charge Explorer to give leaders access to this same information in an easier way.
Hospital Charge Explorer
With 161 million transactions and 8 million accounts, the Hospital Charge Explorer gives users the ability to dig deep into the departments of each hospital. Data can range from a department’s contribution margin all the way to specific services provided for patients.
“Management expert Peter Drucker said, ‘If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it,”’ Eliza said. “By giving our department leaders ready access to patient financial and clinical information, they have a better opportunity to improve efficiency and drive down the cost of care for us and our patients.”
The Hospital Charge Explorer also gives leaders insight into patient and market demographics to make informed decisions on improving or expanding services.
“For example, if OSF was interested in expanding a particular procedure, a logical first step is understanding as much information about patients as possible,” said Ross Payne, a senior business intelligence analyst with Healthcare Analytics. “This can include knowing how many individuals are receiving this service, how old they are, how far they must travel to gain access to this procedure and many other statistics.”
With this information, leaders can use this data to predict the best places to offer this service and enhance marketing efforts.
Easy to use
All information in the Hospital Charge Explorer is standardized, meaning anyone using the tool can pull the same data in the same way. Information is aggregated on a daily basis. Users can also bookmark preferred reports.
“This is our window into the charge detail in our electronic medical record and all of the coding information that goes with patients and their charges,” Eliza said. “It’s a one-stop shop that’s very easy to get to, and I don’t have to put in a data request for the information I need. That’s important to me and my job.”
Last Updated: February 11, 2022