Business intelligence for Medical practices SIMPLE TOOLS TO HELP YOU MANAGE YOUR DATA any of the major practice management (PM) and electronic health record (EHR) software programs are written so that data is stored in a relational database management system from Microsoft, called SQL Server. Most versions of SQL Server include at no additional charge three programs designed to take advantage of and work with the data stored in SQL Server. SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) is used for building cubes and data mining. SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) moves data into and out of SQL Server. SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) creates webpages and schedules email to report on data stored in SQL Server. A brief description of each of these three tools will help billing companies understand these options and how they might help their business. SQl Server Analysis Services One of the main purposes of ssas is to build what are called cubes. a cube is a way to efficiently store a lot of data for analysis. It is common to use microsoft excel to analyze database data, but even the newest versions of excel can only hold one million rows of data. even if you use a pivot table, excel slows down considerably if you put anything close to one million rows of data in a spreadsheet. On the other hand, a cube can easily manage several million rows of data without slowing excel down. Notice the two excel spreadsheets in Figure 1. The spreadsheet called “2014 Billed Charges Connected to Table” has 500,000 records stored in the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is 3.8 kilobytes. The spreadsheet called “Billed Charges Connected to Cube” contains 2.1 million records, over four times as many charges as the first spreadsheet. But the spreadsheet connected to the cube is only 14 kilobytes, less than 0.5 percent of the spreadsheet with the data stored as part of the spreadsheet. storing the data as a cube and connecting excel to the cube allows users to analyze more than four times as much data in less than 0.5 percent of 36 HBma BILLINg • jaNuarY.FeBruarY.2015 the space. Practices with 20 to 30 providers can generate over a million rows in billed charges data in a couple of years. Having the ability to efficiently analyze more data with cubes allows for longer trends and more comprehensive study. ssas also includes a variety of tools to help practices with data mining. There are tools for classification problems (Will a patient show up for their next appointment, or respond to a given treatment?), regression problems (What will a patient’s healthcare cost next year, or what is the value of a new patient?), or clustering problems (Which patients are more likely to respond to a medication or a marketing program?). Typical data mining approaches gather hundreds of thousands or millions of records and look for patterns in the data to predict future outcomes. SQl Server integration Services ssIs is designed to help users move data into sQL server to take advantage of cubes, data mining, and the ssrs tools discussed next. Practices that are trying to analyze data stored outside the sQL server database, such as data in the cloud or in a separate Pm or eHr system, use ssIs to combine the data for analysis. ssIs also offers a wide variety of ways to export data to share with other third-party applications. For example, a practice in Texas uses ssIs to import eligibility and benefits data received as an excel spreadsheet from a third party. every night, the ssIs routine looks for the spreadsheet in a set folder on the network and imports the data to a table in sQL server that is used in generating a superbill to track charges. another practice in Indiana uses ssIs to import eHr data stored in a separate, non-sQL server database into sQL server so that ssrs reporting can be done. a practice in Washington uses ssIs to import clinical data stored in the cloud. The cloud-based reporting system is very limited, but once the data is imported into sQL server, many more reporting options are available. SQl Server Reporting Services ssrs is probably the most immediately useful of the three tools for billing practices. ssrs allows users to create reports based By Nate Moore, CPA, MBA, CMPE M
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