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Astera > Case Studies > A Government Healthcare Department Cuts Down Invoice Data Extraction Time from Hours to Less than a Minute
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A Government Healthcare Department Cuts Down Invoice Data Extraction Time from Hours to Less than a Minute

Technology Category
  • Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms
Applicable Industries
  • Healthcare & Hospitals
Applicable Functions
  • Procurement
  • Quality Assurance
Use Cases
  • Fraud Detection
  • Inventory Management
  • Predictive Replenishment
Services
  • Data Science Services
The Challenge
The government department had to manually extract and aggregate data from more than 1,000 transactions every day. This prevented the team from having an in-depth view of the medication wholesaler’s purchasing patterns and performing accurate cost analysis to utilize the monthly budget better. Similarly, PBMs sent monthly invoices comprising of prescription and billing information in a spreadsheet. However, these invoices had the same compatibility issue and couldn’t be called in the SQL Server database, making it challenging to aggregate usage data for drugs.
About The Customer
This government department works with 1,255 medical institutions to provide healthcare facilities to 9 million military veterans every year. It contracts medication wholesalers and PBMs to meet veterans' medication needs and uses Astera ReportMiner to process invoice data from PDFs for reporting and analyses. The department has the largest integrated healthcare network in the United States, contracting 1,255 medical institutions to serve 9 million military veterans every year. It has dedicated Veteran Integrated Service Networks (VISNs) that work with selected hospitals and outpatient clinics to meet veterans’ medical needs in the covered states. VISNs employ medication wholesalers and PBMs on a contractual basis to supply pharmaceutical products to the designated healthcare institutions and bill the government healthcare department.
The Solution
The VISN sought a solution that can parse the incoming invoices, whether in PDFs or spreadsheets, and convert them into a format that SSIS can read and query. In addition, the solution must be able to build a repeatable process so that the business users don’t have to extract data from the invoices every time manually. After reviewing multiple products in the market and trying Altair Monarch, the team chose Astera ReportMiner to build extraction templates for the job. Astera ReportMiner enables users to build report models and extraction templates that can automatically process countless invoices, as long as the layout remains the same. The product helps extract data based on the predefined extraction logic.
Operational Impact
  • Processing PDF invoices now takes less than a minute to convert the data into Excel format for importing in the SQL Server database.
  • With high-quality invoice data available, the VISN’s pharmacoeconomists now get deeper insights into the medication requirements and utilization trends at a granular level.
  • They can better react to changing market dimensions, like medicine prices, availability of higher quality brands, and better deals on bulk purchases, providing more opportunities for higher cost savings.
Quantitative Benefit
  • Processing PDF invoices now takes less than a minute, down from hours.

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