Nelson Marlborough District Health Board Business Intelligence System
The Nelson Marlborough District Health Board (NMDHB) is the primary publicly funded health care provider in the Nelson/Marlborough region. Its role is to determine and meet community health needs by planning, funding and delivering efficient, high quality hospital, health and disability services. The NMDHB is successful in its endeavours. It is ranked number one in New Zealand for patient satisfaction and continues to expand to cater for demand in this fast growing region.
The Problem
The NMDHB is a large complex organisation with over 2000 staff delivering health care services to a regional population of 130,000. Senior managers require business intelligence to support good decision making, track progress against the district annual plan and meet statutory reporting requirements.
To support senior managers, a team of data analysts fields their requests for information. With many different databases for different parts of the organisation to query, this can be a time consuming and complicated process. Accuracy is paramount so various cross checking procedures are required to verify the quality of the information.
Many of the requests are routine, taking analysts away from more high value work. Sometimes analysts must access systems other staff are using at the same time. This is inconvenient and potentially causes problems. The nature of the organisation also means privacy of information is vital.
The Solution
The NMDHB wanted a clean and efficient solution that enabled managers to have better access to information with less effort. At the heart of such a business intelligence system is a data warehouse. This is where information from various databases is combined into a single set of data. The NMDHB decided initially only information from the patient management system would be housed in the data warehouse. Tools would connect to the data warehouse for reporting, forecasting and analytical purposes.
Creating a data warehouse is a very complex technical process. Montage was engaged because the company specialises in business intelligence systems and has a successful track record in the health sector. The same work processes could be used for the NMDHB project, reducing the effort required and minimising risk.
The initial phase of work established the direction, delivery mechanism, and correct structures for the delivery of this information. Next came the design work and an overall architecture based on short and long term requirements. The project was completed within budget
The NMDHB also required tools with which to access information in the data warehouse. As an independent advisor, Montage was able to recommend the tools which best fit the NMDHB’s needs. A clear plan of possible purchases and pros and cons was produced so informed choices could be made before licenses were purchased or vendors engaged.
As NMDHB data analysts would be responsible for running the systems on a day to day basis, it was important they understood the workings and design of the data warehouse. Training sessions were run using NMDHB data and systems, staff were trained onsite about Wherescape RED and the Microsoft SQL Server data warehouse.
The Benefits
The business intelligence system has streamlined the data analysts’ work processes, enabling them to more quickly and efficiently provide management and external agencies with accurate up-to-date information. The data warehouse also gives the analysts more flexibility, making it easier to meet new reporting requirements.
Managers will be able to analyse information via the intranet instead of relying on analysts. This will speed up management processes and free up the analysts to concentrate on more satisfying and important work.
Having experienced first hand the value of a data warehouse driven business intelligence system, the NMDHB has engaged Montage to add the theatre and human resources/payroll systems to the warehouse. Being a scaleable robust system built with the future in mind, this is a relatively straight forward process. Most important of all, the growing population of Nelson Marlborough can be assured their District Health Board has the infrastructure in place required to make good management decisions based on timely accurate information.
