Contact Information: Press Contacts: Kathleen Moran Information Builders (917) 339-6313 Jennifer Moebius Emerge PR (617) 729-3183
Hospitals Embrace Business Intelligence and Integration Technologies From Information Builders to Increase Revenue and Improve Patient Care
Mount Sinai, UVA Medical, NYU Langone and Others Use WebFOCUS and iWay Software to Propel More Than 100 Percent Growth for Information Builders in Healthcare Market
| Source: Information Builders
NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - December 10, 2008) - Information Builders, the independent leader
in operational business intelligence (BI) systems and
its iWay Software division, an innovator of enterprise
integration solutions, today announced that numerous healthcare
organizations are using WebFOCUS and iWay Software to bill for more
revenue, reduce costs, and gain better visibility into operations to
improve patient care. Information Builders has seen more than 100 percent
growth in its healthcare business in 2008. Hospitals today maintain an
immense amount of information that must be carefully stored, analyzed, and
exchanged. NYU Langone Medical Center, Mount Sinai Hospital, Jefferson
Regional Medical Center, University of Virginia Department of Medicine,
Clarian Health, and others have selected Information Builders to streamline
the flow of this information and to track financial, clinical, and
operational performance.
"Hospitals and healthcare providers depend on precise information to
control costs, monitor patient trends, and ensure that patients get the
quality care they need," said Gerald Cohen, CEO and founder of Information
Builders. "To do this, more and more healthcare provider organizations are
turning to BI and integration technologies."
"Many providers are aggressively pursuing strategies in response to
escalating costs, increased competition, and price and quality
transparency," said Alan Eisman, director of Healthcare Solutions for
Information Builders. "As data has become digitized, providers are using BI
as a key enabler in this transformation to guide and empower stakeholders,
enhance the revenue cycle, increase productivity, and improve care."
Mount Sinai Hospital Identifies $4.5 Million in Missed Charges
With Information Builders WebFOCUS BI platform, Mount Sinai discovered it
had undercharged patients and insurance companies by $4.5 million. Mount
Sinai used WebFOCUS to pull financial data from various data warehouses and
allow accounts receivables personnel to slice and dice the data to conduct
payment variance queries and to look for outliers. Through ad hoc analytics
and reporting, end users can easily query specific information
and identify rebilling opportunities. Over the last year, Mount Sinai has
been able to recover $2.5 million in revenue from insurers who underpaid
patient bills.
"In addition to using WebFOCUS to identify underpayments, we also use it
across the hospital for departmental reporting," said David Fuld, director
of decision support for Mount Sinai Hospital. "We wanted a system that
allowed nontechnical users to easily access and bring data to these
meetings without needing the IT department to pull the reports. WebFOCUS
made this possible by allowing users to easily create drill-down reports,
containing visual analytics and color coding, and push key information out
to other users, via commonly-used formats such as Excel."
Jefferson Regional Medical Center Cures Information Overload Syndrome
As the fourth largest hospital in Arkansas, Jefferson Regional Medical
Center serves more than 280,000 residents in 11 counties. Licensed for 471
beds and with an average daily census of about 240 patients, the hospital
employs more than 2,000 people. Jefferson Regional implemented WebFOCUS to
construct a self-service reporting environment that organizes reports into
three primary groups: financial reports for the finance department,
productivity reports for department managers, and bed management reports
for hospital administrators. The BI environment enables clinicians and
administrators to quickly hone in on specific information related to
patients, reimbursements, payer mixes, admissions trends, staff
productivity, and dozens of other business functions. WebFOCUS has boosted
staff productivity, improved physician deficiency rates, and cut costs
throughout the facility.
"Providing good care is our primary objective, but of course we want to do
that within the bounds of what is reasonable and financially responsible,"
said Morie Mehyou, an assistant vice president of IM and decision support
at Jefferson Regional. "WebFOCUS gives us the insight we need to create a
more efficient operation. It is one of the best technology investments the
hospital has made. The cost is minimal, and the return has been
phenomenal."
Clarian Health Expects $10 Million ROI
Clarian Health, the largest healthcare provider in the Midwest, is
standardizing on iWay for business-to-business (B2B) and
application-to-application (A2A) projects. Based on experience to date,
Clarian projects an ROI of $10 million. Located in Indianapolis, Indiana
and consistently cited as one of the top healthcare organizations in the
U.S., Clarian Health has a history of firsts, including the nation's first
lung-pancreas transplant. The organization thrives on embracing
cutting-edge medical procedures and innovative information technology.
The Clarian Revenue Cycle Services division's current project is to
implement the EDI Health Care Claim Status Request (HIPAA EDI 276). With
iWay's HIPAA solution, Clarian can initiate an automatic request for
information on claims past a certain date and receive back information
automatically. The automation of this business process reduces phone calls
and decreases administration costs for the requester. Implementing HIPAA
EDI 276/277 processing will automatically generate and submit queries,
eliminating the need for manual entry of individual queries or calls to a
contractor to obtain this information. iWay HIPAA solution will help
Clarian improve business agility, reduce costs, and eliminate
inefficiencies.
"iWay makes it more cost effective and efficient for us to manage these
integration challenges," said David Burton, executive director of I.T.
Clarian Revenue Cycle. "The first project was completed four weeks early
and under budget. The second project had 80 percent reusability from the
first project, which is key. It gives us a great ROI with the speed and
security of knowing it works."
Plexus Medical Group Helps Hospitals Improve Financial/Clinical Visibility
Using Information Builders WebFOCUS platform, Netherlands-based Plexus has
created a nationwide system that delivers information about costs,
reimbursements, treatment success rates, and many other key performance indicators (KPIs). The BI solution,
called Pi, helps providers analyze the quality and efficiency of their
primary processes, and then compares these results to national benchmarks.
Hospitals using Pi may have cost reductions of up to 10 percent of their
annual budgets, thanks to insight derived from the system.
"All healthcare organizations strive to provide high-quality care for an
equitable price. But how do these organizations know if they are achieving
this goal without precise measures," asked Erik-Jan Vlieger, senior
consultant at Plexus Medical Group. "We're using BI technology to give
administrators and physicians a level of visibility into their facilities
and processes that was formerly difficult to achieve, so they can improve
the quality and value of their services."
University of Virginia Prescribes BI for a Healthy Bottom Line
The UVA Department of Medicine successfully implemented the WebFOCUS BI
platform, merging financial reports, faculty remuneration plans,
statistics, data tracking, and clinical billing reports. More than 300
users now depend on WebFOCUS to bridge two accounting systems and satisfy a
diverse set of reporting requirements, including the ability to tightly integrate the new reports with Microsoft Excel. The health system
also uses the software to create trend reports, such as in-depth analysis
of areas where expenses are rising in various divisions. WebFOCUS improved
the efficiency of employees throughout the organization, with direct
savings of more than $150,000 per year.
"We needed a reporting environment that was easy to use and could handle
the needs of our physicians, as well as our clinical and department
administrators," said Elizabeth Wildman, vice chair and chief operating
officer for the Department of Medicine. "With WebFOCUS, we now have a
single reporting tool to take care of our most acute business needs."
NYU Langone Medical Center Increases Labor Productivity and Reduces Labor
Costs
NYU LMC created a Web-based Labor Productivity tool with WebFOCUS that
leveraged existing payroll, billing, and budget data and delivered it in a
fresh and radically useful way. The new system, a holistic combination of
people, processes, and technology, empowered hospital department managers
to measure and monitor labor utilization while controlling associated costs
quickly and easily. It transformed what was previously a theoretical
exercise into timely, meaningful, and actionable information that was a
major piece in helping NYULMC achieve and maintain a major reduction in
salary. The system also identified opportunities for more accurate patient
billing, and a favorable labor budget, while instilling a culture of
accountability throughout the organization.
Using the new system, NYULMC's 230 department managers can now quickly and
easily analyze the productivity of their departments with a few mouse
clicks. "More than just reporting statistics," said Mary Tedaldi, RN, MS,
MA and senior director of NYULMC's Performance Management Office, "the
Labor Productivity tool provides management with a structured approach to
understanding the root cause of favorable and unfavorable results and
taking corrective action where necessary."
About Information Builders
As a leading independent business intelligence (BI) company for the past 30
years, Information Builders has provided innovative solutions to more than
12,000 customers, including most of the Fortune 100 and numerous U.S.
federal government agencies. The company's flagship WebFOCUS product is the
world's most widely used BI platform. Superior architecture and intuitive
nature enables WebFOCUS to address the needs of everyone in the extended
global enterprise -- executive, analytical, operational, and beyond. It
provides the agility to adapt to changing business conditions with the
security, scalability, and flexibility to support dozens to millions of
users.
Unique to the company is the integration expertise it brings to the BI
market. Information Builders iWay Software suite solves complex integration
problems with pre-built components that require minimal custom programming.
The award-winning combination of WebFOCUS and iWay gives Information
Builders customers the ability to embrace the company motto: "Because
Everyone Makes Decisions."
Information Builders is committed to customer service excellence with a
Professional Services division that specializes in building custom
applications using WebFOCUS and iWay Software. Headquartered in New York
City with 90 offices worldwide, the company employs 1,450 people and has
more than 350 business partners. Visit http://www.informationbuilders.com.