Developing a consolidated management view by integrating financial, operational and clinical data

Abstract

Demographic, economic and social changes create pressure on healthcare industry to adapt itself to increase quality by decreasing cost along with the upcoming changes. Innovative developments in technology are capable to bring new solutions. By the use of technology, data have become more instrumental to understand where exactly quality and cost can be balanced to improve healthcare services.

However, collection and processing of data bring new challenges. Collected from many different points, massive amount of data are continuously accumulated. Data need to be analysed systematically in order to gain actionable insight for decision-making on strategic, tactical and practical level. Gaining such insight requires industry know-how, thinking out of box and having right tools in place to see the big picture in multiple dimensions. Healthcare managers require customized data analytic tools to visualize and interpret collected data, in order to solve the challenge of quality and cost balance further on the road.

This thesis work reveals a practical way how to approach to the concept of data analysis by developing a data analytic application for the thesis commissioner, Helsinki University Hospital (HUH) Psychiatry. Using Qlikview Business Intelligence platform, a customized data analytic tool is developed to analyse HUH Psychiatry’s collected data set, as a part of their ongoing operational excellence program, which targeted to specify, standardize, record and report services as products.