Enterprise Data Warehousing and Advanced Business Analytics Help Provider Manage Costs and Sharpen Focus on Quality Care
The Client
Stonebridge’s client is a leading provider of long-term care for the elderly, with 450 facilities providing assisted-living, home care/hospice, and therapeutic services for approximately 42,000 residents in 26 states and the District of Columbia.
The Problem
The long-term health care industry faces external pressures that have led to decreased revenues and increased costs. The majority of these pressures, such as the so-called “Medicare cliff” from chronic reimbursement shortfalls, fall outside the health care provider’s direct control.
Faced with these market challenges, the client sought to better manage its overall costs and increase revenues by focusing on an aspect of its business it could control. That is, ensuring better, more informed decision-making by its more than 800 executives, managers, and analysts through timely access to business-critical information. Unfortunately, the client’s existing information systems presented many challenges to analysts and decision-makers in their efforts to get the right information at the right time. These challenges included:
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Disparate data sources and multiple reporting applications that were often redundant and inconsistent.
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A lack of integration of operational data, which prevented a complete view of key performance indicators.
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Low user confidence in the accuracy of the data due to inadequate reconciliation processes.
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Reporting tools that were hard to use and support.
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Technology architecture and database design issues that contributed to data retrieval difficulties, especially when complex queries were posed.
The Solution
Stonebridge conducted a comprehensive assessment of the client’s current data integration and reporting environment with the goal of establishing a single, cohesive enterprise data warehouse architecture and creating a strategic road map for its subsequent development. Using an iterative development methodology, Stonebridge established an integrated data architecture to support operational reporting, analysis, and monitoring. The company also established a standard reporting and analysis application architecture to support the unique needs of the client’s diverse decision-maker “types.” This initial integration work laid the foundation for subsequent development of data marts supporting the client’s existing business processes as well as its new needs largely driven by regulatory changes impacting the long-term health care industry.
With the enterprise architecture in place, Stonebridge employed a phased development approach to deliver multiple data marts that address end-user reporting and analysis needs. In Phase I, Stonebridge developed a Labor & Census data mart, which gives users the ability to track total labor hours and the number of residents at each facility. In Phase II, Stonebridge developed a second data mart that allows the client to calculate key labor cost metrics for their facilities. In Phase III, the company developed another data mart that integrated the client’s Aging of Account Receivables data. Additionally, Stonebridge created a new data mart for analyzing results of the State Survey system, which rates each of the client’s 450 facilities on quality of care in accordance with regulations related to Medicare patients.
The Benefits
The enterprise architecture initially developed by Stonebridge provides the client with a consistent and stable data warehouse environment that forms the basis for the development of function-specific data marts. These data marts enable the client to understand the precise financial impact of staffing at its long-term care facilities, and give managers the ability to see the dollar amounts used for labor at each facility so they can manage within budget controllable factors such as raises, bonuses, and incentives. An executive manager for the client stated that the Labor & Census data mart alone saved the company several million dollars as the result of improved data availability. Also, through better access to Accounts Receivable data, the client is more proactive in its collection activities and has significantly reduced the amount of write-offs due to uncollected revenue.
The Technology
The primary development tools utilized by Stonebridge in this project: