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Customers In The Spotlight

Presbyterian Healthcare Services

"Over the past several years, the company has seen fantastic growth in the number of people Presbyterian Health Plan serves and in the quality of service Presbyterian Health Plan provides. BusinessObjects and the use of information have helped to make this transformation possible."

Bruce Alexander
Enterprise Data Warehouse Manager
Presbyterian Healthcare Services

Challenge

When Presbyterian Healthcare Services got the message from New Mexico's Health Services Department (HSD) that it would need to trim $40 million from its annual Medicaid budget, it was cause for concern. But the real challenge arrived a moment later: The cuts had to be identified immediately, within a period of two to three days. Frances Donio went to work.

"While one team brainstormed ideas, the analysts were able to use BusinessObjects™ to quickly pull supporting evidence for each idea that was put forward," says Donio, director of enterprise decision support. "Through the use of BusinessObjects and what we had previously created in our data warehouse, we were able to find the necessary dollar difference and implement a plan that would work for the next year."

"The issue was how we could absorb that kind of contractual cutback and still remain solvent," says Bruce Alexander, who manages the enterprise data warehouse. "Frances and her crew used Business Objects against our underlying data warehouse to find the opportunities to save that sort of money. The analysis was forwarded to the president of the company and other officers involved in the contract negotiations with HSD. Based on that analysis, we were able to break even, if not do a little better. Without it, we could have ended up losing money and potentially impacting delivery of care to a needy part of the population."

Approach

Presbyterian Healthcare Services conducted a formal search and comparison before choosing the BusinessObjects business intelligence (BI) platform from Business Objects, an SAP company. "We developed a set of criteria and then obtained evaluation copies of the different vendors' software," recalls Alexander. "We did not want the vendors to help us figure out what we could and couldn't do with the software. We reasoned that if we could muddle our way through, we'd actually get a sense of how easy it was to learn."

The next step was to bring Business Objects and the competition in for presentations and demonstrations. "We ranked the software according to the formal criteria, and the BusinessObjects suite came out ahead," says Alexander. "In retrospect, this was the best possible outcome, because our whole intent is to make this as much a self-serve environment as possible. The other toolset was very IT-intensive; for us, it would have moved too much of the work and decision-making into the IT world. With BusinessObjects, we've been able to address all sorts of needs that we otherwise could not have addressed." Along with the BI platform, BusinessObjects Desktop Intelligence™, BusinessObjects Web Intelligence®, and Crystal Reports® give Presbyterian Healthcare Services flexible reporting options.

BusinessObjects definitely earns its keep at Presbyterian Healthcare Services. "We have several departments on the health plan side that are using it, especially our medical affairs department, which incorporates quality management and health services," says Donio. "BusinessObjects helps with diabetes control, by enabling us to give physicians a listing of patients that need further tests. We track children that need immunizations, women that require gynecological tests or mammograms, and many other groups. We also use BusinessObjects to track and report on utilization information, such as in-patient stays, emergency room visits, and office visits." Other health plan departments that leverage BusinessObjects include provider services, pharmacy, claims, appeals and grievance, and the special investigative unit.

Results

In addition to helping enhance the quality of care provided to New Mexico citizens, BusinessObjects has made Donio's life a lot easier. "It used to take me hours to do an in-patient analysis report, which looks at the number of admissions, number of days, product lines, and similar metrics," she says. "Now I can create that report and have it out the door in less than an hour."

The Business Objects Elite support plan in place at Presbyterian Healthcare Services is a success story in its own right. "When we migrated to the BusinessObjects XI environment, with the new technology and product mix, we felt the extra support would be helpful until we were up to speed on the new release," says Alexander. "That was not only a safety valve for us as technical folks – it was also a recognition of the business criticality now associated with BusinessObjects. Five years ago, we could have sustained an eight-hour outage while we waited for the following business day to resolve the technical issues. That wouldn't be acceptable today – there's too much riding on BusinessObjects. The around-the-clock access to technical support puts our minds at ease and allows us to work problems, regardless of the time of day."

The initial, and still primary, use of BusinessObjects is in the health plan area; however, the software has also made inroads on the delivery side. "We have a data mart - we call it the 'Heart Mart' - and a series of BusinessObjects reports that go to the medical director of our heart program at the hospital," says Alexander. "This allows him to review mortalities every month, and look at critical outcomes. In addition, we produce all the mortality reporting for the hospital. They go through a review of every death to see whether there were issues in the delivery of care, or if anything could have been done differently. With the help of BusinessObjects, we have established a foundation of giving reliable and timely data to the business units within the health plan. Now we're taking that same asset to the delivery side."

BusinessObjects is used for tracking patients from the time they enter the hospital all the way through final discharge. For the corporate entity as a whole, it supports reporting on employee turnover. It is also used for customer counting, which involves looking across the health plan, the medical group, and the delivery system to see where the same individual has had an encounter with different parts of the organization. This gives Presbyterian Healthcare Services an idea of its penetration into the market and the number of people it is serving, along with basic demographic information on the patient population.

"On many different levels, I think that BusinessObjects has been a catalyst for change at Presbyterian Healthcare Services," concludes Alexander. "It has been an excellent tool as the company has shifted to being a more information-driven organization. In concert with the data warehousing technologies we've employed, it has allowed our leaders to transform the character and culture of the organization – both in terms of the strategic view of where we need to grow, and also how they use information to support critical decision-making. Over the past several years, the company has seen fantastic growth in the number of people Presbyterian Health Plan serves and in the quality of service Presbyterian Health Plan provides. BusinessObjects and the use of information have helped to make this transformation possible."

• Learn more about BusinessObjects XI
• Learn more about BusinessObjects Web Intelligence
• Read more Business Objects customer success stories

Quick Facts

• Industry:
  Healthcare
• Business pain:
  With massive amounts of disparate data, patient tracking and report creation took too long, making it impossible to provide reliable information in a timely manner.
• Why Business Objects?
  Flexible, powerful business intelligence software quickly gives management the information required for critical decision-making.
• Business Objects Products and Services:
  BusinessObjects XI, BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports