Symex Inc. is going to change the way you view the Healthcare Financial Footprint.

In the last 6 years HIT has opened its eyes to the new world of healthcare analytics. Traditional reporting has become very cumbersome and in a nutshell a real data overload. Executives have had to historically weight their IT group in attempts to grab information from many disparate data sources and manually develop reports for weekly, monthly, quarterly reporting; as well as chair and board member reports that arrive in the request box with regularity.

Symex recently debuted the newest release of Infinite Views Healthcare at the 2009 IDC Health IT Insights Summit in Savannah, GA to an outstanding 93% provider interest in “The Symex Model” case study on “Changing the way Hospitals are Viewing their Business…”

“Providers are looking into more effective ways to facilitate real profitable changes in their hospitals and Symex Healthcare is delivering on those requests. When I talk about reporting; most first reactions are that they are already doing some type of reporting, have a large system in place or don’t feel they can afford to make the desired move. But after 15mins with one of our professionals and after reviewing our process they are ready to discuss it further. Many hospitals that are currently using a reporting process today still see a lot of benefit in our system and approach, they see the difference we are making and are interested in the potential for their organization. John Sposato, Senior Vice President Symex Healthcare“

Many healthcare executives today receive manually generated reports with various parts of the information that’s day’s weeks and even months old. They’re driving major decisions on information that has no ability for source validation without having the whole company in their office. In many cases these executives are making the highest impact decisions using reports that come too late to be effective to the requested change management. May areas of the organization are operating in a dangerous silo management style and there is swirling within the decisions direction and change management process.

Others organizations receive similar volumes of information in a mostly automated process but still must filter thru the information and reports with a team to figure out where the hemorrhaging is taking place in the hospitals financials. Automated reporting platforms are nothing new but many of the real impact areas are mashed in with other findings and still takes derated efforts to summarize action planes and furthermore set proper benchmarks by incorporating accurate trending and forecasting.

Many hospitals are not efficiently or effectively able to use data warehousing or reporting in a true streamlined process. Executives ask their teams to gather the information, summarize it and simplify the information in charting and graphing. Enter the dashboard game arriving on the scene by pasting static graphs onto single pages for review in a snapshot. The wow factor came into play when new interactive web-based dashboards driven by flash and java started showing themselves just in recent years.

Now the healthcare industry is seeing modern dashboards hitting a record high in the hype cycle and hospitals are looking to use them in replacement of, or an overview of their manual or high volume automated reporting process. The use of dashboarding to view the whole healthcare footprint has shown some improvement in the process but it’s not the most effective answer. Hospitals that cant afford the modern highly efficient reporting solutions are trying to use dashboards as a fill gap to stop some of the loss.

Companies cannot effectively run on mere reports and or dashboards alone. And using the traditional reports in conjunction with the dashboards is still not a lean, effective, actionable model. While dashboards have sped up the discovery and decision process; those viewing the data must still drive thru panels and panels of dashboards. They’re looking at numerous meters, gauges, line and bar graphs, with drill downs. The panels are lit up like a Las Vegas skyline having red, yellow, green, blue and who knows what other colors to identify its subject’s values. The investigating parties may spend two to three hours on a topic that has a “red” representation only to find it’s not a large volume impact or in the overall picture should have not absorbed so much time. Most executives first say when looking at this format of reporting “where do I start”. Today’s problem is not necessarily tomorrows and so just having standard views of subjects are not inclusive of the whole footprint. And having to drive thru all the panels and dashboards can run your tank dry before you find out what to act on.

With introduction of the Symex Model to organizations in the Infinite Views Healthcare (IVHC) application healthcare executives are getting only what they need when they need it, its impact, source of impact, and direction to the resolution. Fast, effective and yes streamlined.

“The Symex Model” is delivered thru a hierarchal roll based reporting application that delivers the highest level effecting issues to the key members. IVHC gives executives and mid level management the reports to make informative and effective snap decisions with the supporting information to back up the request. Change management requests are moved in a chained method as to promote action to resolve the effecting factors. The whole process is lean, fast and effective. We use the basis of the Multi-Level Interdisciplinary Decision scale to better represent the hierarchal impact within an organization. And so a combination of actionable reporting and dashboarding is used to deliver an effective punch. High level business decisions account for the smallest in number of only around 10% of the decisions made but have the most impact of all decisions within the organization. Mid Level decisions are next in line and make up about 25% of the action taken and having a moderate impact; but this process falls apart in the common infective silo management that plagues many organizations today. The collapse is not because of poor management, it’s due to a lack of availability to structure an effective action model.

When executives are brought to light of specific issues and request changes to be made; the silos don’t see the same picture as the executive, the actions are not able to be properly benchmarked and progress is lessened and fades with the discovery of new objectives and findings that can arise daily.
Symex arranges reporting and dashboarding to be an effective tool in change management? Apply the principles learned in the f1 chart into a method that chains the process and allows for the decisions impact to me monitored and ability to keep executives time focused on the items that can make real change in the hospitals overall health. Here is how Symex makes it happen.
Executives are given an opening list of issues and rewarding progressions to take action on and engage the noted 10% of decisions to the most debilitating issues in the organization. The decisions are made simple by laying out the 4 most crucial sections of information needed to drive an effective change.

• What is the Issue: Tell me the issue in clear terms.
• Impact if the issue: How I this effecting the organization?
• Root cause: Where is this problem stemming from?
• Supporting Information: How can direct the next level of management to take action?

This level of reporting does not bind up the executive’s time. The issues are the real cause of loss for the organization and snap decisions are able to be made that have the largest positive impact on the health of the hospitals revenue. The executive was able to point out the root cause of the issues to mid level management and request for changes to be made. Mid level managers were able to directly investigate the issue with the executive’s direction and take action to slow or stop the hemorrhaging and in turn increase hospital profitability margins. The Executive can then accurately benchmark the issue and follow up with the progression status.

While the weekly and monthly actionable reports covered the top 10% of the issues that cause the largest loss, the executive will still need insight to the whole footprint and dashboarding gives a streamlined view of the remaining portions. Symex uses dashboarding as a level 2 view of the organization for executives. As an Example: While being able to attack the most crucial issues with the actionable reports the executive may learn while meeting with his CNO that hospital staff infections are on the rise in the ED. While this issue may not have made the top 10% list the executive still needs a way to quickly investigate the rising issue before it becomes a larger more effecting problem. Using the dashboarding overview the CNO can review in tandem with the CEO factors involved, see in a graphical view the history and make a directive action plan on investigating and lowering the issue before it rises to the hot zone list (the largest 10% list). Again the executives can then give the next level of management the information they need to facilitate the proper resolutions.

Dashboarding is effective in a level 2 overview of the healthcare footprint. It successfully encompasses the closed loop reporting needed to make the executive and management team’s effective decision makers. Symex dashboarding can show not only the items on the hot zone list but subjects that are not as well. It gives the user the ability to use at a glance views to review other areas on interest within the hospital.

Being able to set in motion The Symex Model gives true effective ability for increased margins, a healthier hospital, positive culture and change that makes a difference.

Last but not least are the frequent need for chair and board members to better understand the ups and downs, in and outs, and the work that is being done to improve the stability of the hospital and the receipt of funds to sponsor changes that improve the hospitals service to the community.

IVHC has incorporated a flexible packaged set of reports that answer 95% of the requested information that board wants to see. These reports are print on demand and will actually set the majority of the agenda for the quarterly board meetings. These packets show the most impacting issues from the quarter past in a high level understandable view. The board packets show the effort given to the issues and the results to date. When hospitals attempt to use the first mentioned styles of reporting to generate board packets to facilitate and disseminate the issues, effect, action and progression from that quarter it again is a painful swat at an attempt to clarify what has been accomplished. The ability to generate monthly manager and quarterly board packets with such ease releases valuable time for the Executive, and management teams to continue focus on making changes that drive positive effects. The automation of these packets in turn reduces the burden of IT work overload.

 

To set up a live demo of the Symex Model and Infinite Views Healthcare contact us at 800-747-1694. Or email us for a representative to give you a call at info@symexinc.com

Symex Healthcare, “Changing the Way Hospitals are Viewing their Business…”