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Quinte Health Care Identifies $10 Million Opportunity With WebFOCUS
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Visualization
Applicable Industries
- Healthcare & Hospitals
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Use Cases
- Predictive Maintenance
- Process Control & Optimization
- Real-Time Location System (RTLS)
Services
- Data Science Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
Changes in government funding required Quinte Health Care (QHC) to cut $10 million from its operating budget. The company needed better business intelligence tools for easier access to information and analytics, so decision-makers could understand where money could be saved. The new funding approach, known as Health System Funding Reform (HSFR), comprises the health-based allocation model (HBAM) and Quality-Based Procedures (QBP). This strategy provides the government with an evidence-based method for distributing funds. Every year, healthcare takes a larger portion of the tax base and the government wants to mitigate the huge variation in care and outcomes across Canada’s hospitals. There is also a shift in fund allocation, from hospitals to community health centers and home care, as it becomes increasingly clear that people recover more quickly if they can be released from hospitals sooner and moved to another setting.
About The Customer
Quinte Health Care (QHC) provides a wide range of healthcare services to 160,000 people living in Prince Edward, Hastings, and Northumberland Counties in Ontario, Canada. Care is provided via four hospitals: QHC Belleville General Hospital, QHC North Hastings Hospital, QHC Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital, and QHC Trenton Memorial Hospital. QHC has 1,600 employees (300 medical staff) and 260 inpatient beds. For decades, in Canada as in the U.S., health plans routinely paid for treatments and procedures without excessive scrutiny via Global Funding. The new trend is to pay for outcomes and reward quality. However, Ontario has a new approach to healthcare funding, known as Health System Funding Reform (HSFR), which comprises the health-based allocation model (HBAM) and Quality-Based Procedures (QBP).
The Solution
To meet these needs QHC turned to software solutions from Information Builders. The company used iWay DataMigrator to build a data warehouse and the WebFOCUS business intelligence (BI) platform to deliver analytics via a user-friendly BI portal. More than 300 people throughout the organization, from nurses to executives, rely on this BI environment to measure fundamental processes and analyze critical trends in the patient data. Information Builders’ technology has helped the company to measurably improve operations, meet financial requirements, and increase outcomes in key areas of patient care. QHC also used WebFOCUS to create key performance indicators (KPIs) that help clinicians and administrators measure a huge variety of cost and quality factors. KPIs such as Percent Alternate Level of Care Days, Inpatient Satisfaction, and Emergency Department Length of Stay are delivered via a combination of dashboards and reports.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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