Centra Health Turns to SAS for Performance Management That Improves Patient Care; Healthcare Provider Selects SAS Strategic Performance Management for Healthcare.Business Editors/High-Tech Writers CARY, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 15, 2004 To deliver the best possible care for their patients, healthcare executives must continuously satisfy the needs of many different constituencies: the patients they treat, the physicians who practice in their healthcare facilities, the health insurers who pay the bills, the skilled nurses who are in high demand in the job market, the communities they serve and the government agencies that regulate them. To effectively manage their relationships with all of these groups, healthcare administrators need timely, accurate and powerful business intelligence to maximize the use of their resources. That's why SAS (1) (SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, www.sas.com) A software company that specializes in data warehousing and decision support software based on the SAS System. Founded in 1976, SAS is one of the world's largest privately held software companies. See SAS System. (R), the leader in business intelligence, today announced that Centra Health, a provider of hospital and outpatient care for families throughout central Virginia, will use SAS(R) Strategic Performance Management for Healthcare to power the health system's scorecarding efforts. "SAS Strategic Performance Management for Healthcare is the logical next step for us in the evolution of our decision-support services," said Bill Varner, Centra Health's vice president, strategic planning Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people. and marketing. "Our administrators have grown accustomed to delving into massive volumes of data to quickly answer questions that help us improve our services. With SAS Strategic Performance Management for Healthcare, we will be able to take our decision support to the next level by ensuring that we focus on those tasks that have the greatest influence on achieving our mission: providing excellent care...every time." "Centra Health has been a valued SAS customer for many years, and we're proud of the role we've played in helping the executives there make better business and clinical decisions with our business intelligence software," said Theresa Tesh, senior director of SAS' Healthcare Division. "We're excited about the opportunity to help Centra Health expand their strategic decision-support capabilities throughout the entire organization with SAS Strategic Performance Management for Healthcare." SAS(R) Strategic Performance Management for Healthcare to improve scorecard system Centra Health began implementing a scorecard system about a year ago, with administrators receiving spreadsheet reports on the status of certain key performance indicators Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are financial and non-financial metrics used to quantify objectives to reflect strategic performance of an organization. KPIs are used in Business Intelligence to assess the present state of the business and to prescribe a course of action. (KPIs). While the process of populating the scorecards with some of the KPIs was automated, many metrics metrics Managed care A popular term for standards by which the quality of a product, service, or outcome of a particular form of Pt management is evaluated. See TQM. were copied and pasted from different spreadsheets, a time-consuming, labor-intensive process that didn't provide immediate access to the underlying data feeding those KPIs. With SAS Strategic Performance Management for Healthcare, administrators will be able to use a single, consolidated Web-based interface that allows them to see KPIs that have been automatically pulled from source systems. They can then drill down to see the data that feeds those KPIs; set up alerts that send notifications when KPIs have deviated from acceptable, user-defined norms; determine the people responsible for each KPI KPI Key Performance Indicator KPI Kuwait Petroleum International KPI Kiev Polytechnic Institute (Ukraine) KPI Kernel Programming Interface KPI King Pin Inclination (vehicle steering geometry angle) ; and archive business definitions that outline how the data is derived and the justification for doing so. The decision-support staff at Centra Health has prepared scorecards for the executive level. Patient care units, physicians and individual clinical service lines, such as obstetrics obstetrics (ŏbstĕ`trĭks), branch of medicine concerned with the treatment of women during pregnancy, labor, childbirth (see birth), and the time after childbirth. and long-term care long-term care (LTC), n the provision of medical, social, and personal care services on a recurring or continuing basis to persons with chronic physical or mental disorders. , will receive scorecards specifically tailored for their groups throughout 2004. "Beyond the day-to-day monitoring of Centra Health's performance in vital areas, the key benefit that the SAS Strategic Performance Management for Healthcare solution will bring is its ability to reveal how our KPIs are interrelated in·ter·re·late tr. & intr.v. in·ter·re·lat·ed, in·ter·re·lat·ing, in·ter·re·lates To place in or come into mutual relationship. in so we can determine which factors have the greatest impact on our desired outcomes," Varner said. "For instance, to what extent does a decrease in the length of stay influence our readmission readmission Managed care The admission of a Pt to a health care facility for a condition–eg, stroke, MI, GI bleeding, hip fracture, cancer surgery, shortly after discharge. See nth admission. Cf Admission, Discharge. rate? How much does the turnover of our nursing staff affect patient satisfaction and the quality of patient care? SAS Strategic Performance Management for Healthcare will help us take an analytic approach with accurate information that allows us to evaluate how these and many other factors are correlated. In the end, we'll be able to use this intelligence to provide our patients better care." A growing trend in healthcare In a recent study by Meta Group, 85 percent of the companies surveyed said they will be implementing or will already have in place a business performance management (BPM) solution in the next 18 months (Source: META Group Inc., Business Performance Management: 85% to Take the Plunge). SAS has found that BPM is quickly gaining traction in the healthcare arena, and with good reason. The leaders of healthcare organizations have always known that they must balance the needs of many different groups affected by the decisions they make. Many prestigious healthcare providers across the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. are using the SAS Strategic Performance Management for Healthcare solution, including Baptist Health System of Birmingham, Ala.; Brigham and Women's Hospital Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) is a hospital in the Longwood Area of the Boston, Massachusetts neighborhood of Mission Hill. With Massachusetts General Hospital, it is one of the two founding members of Partners HealthCare. in Boston; Maine Medical Center Maine Medical Center (MMC), located in Portland, Maine in the United States, is the largest hospital in northern New England. It is a 606-bed facility which also serves as a teaching hospital. ; and Yale New Haven New Haven, city (1990 pop. 130,474), New Haven co., S Conn., a port of entry where the Quinnipiac and other small rivers enter Long Island Sound; inc. 1784. Firearms and ammunition, clocks and watches, tools, rubber and paper products, and textiles are among the many Health System of southern Connecticut. SAS Strategic Performance Management for Healthcare lets organizations focus, communicate and collaborate on strategy and then turn these strategies into action. With SAS Strategic Performance Management for Healthcare, organizational leaders can implement balanced scorecards Balanced Scorecard A performance metric used in strategic management to identify and improve various internal functions and their resulting external outcomes. The balanced scorecard attempts to measure and provide feedback to organizations in order to assist in implementing , Six Sigma Not to be confused with Sigma 6. Six Sigma is a set of practices originally developed by Motorola to systematically improve processes by eliminating defects.[1] A defect is defined as nonconformity of a product or service to its specifications. or other quality frameworks to connect traditional business data, like revenues and profits, with intangible measures such as the satisfaction of their patients, employees and physicians. The solution allows organizational leaders to communicate and measure, at an enterprise level, the degree of strategic alignment and the progress toward desired outcomes. About SAS SAS is the market leader in providing a new generation of business intelligence software and services that create true enterprise intelligence. SAS solutions are used at more than 40,000 sites - including 90 percent of the Fortune 500 - to develop more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; to enable better, more accurate and informed decisions; and to drive organizations forward. SAS is the only vendor that completely integrates leading data warehousing See data warehouse. data warehousing - data warehouse , analytics and traditional BI applications to create intelligence from massive amounts of data. For nearly three decades, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know(R). Visit us at www.sas.com. SAS and all other SAS Institute SAS Institute Inc., headquartered in Cary, North Carolina, USA, has been a major producer of software since it was founded in 1976 by Anthony Barr, James Goodnight, John Sall and Jane Helwig. Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. (R) indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright (C) 2004 SAS Institute Inc. Cary, NC, USA. All rights reserved. |
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