Catholic Health East
Best Practice Narrative RHC: Mercy Health System (South Eastern
Pennsylvania)
One Bala Plaza, Suite 402
Bala Cynwyd
|
Category:
Operations & Benchmarking Contact: Jim Beinlich
Title:
E-mail:
Fax:
Phone: (610) 237-4029
|
Description of the Best Practice: Telecommunications
Mercy Health System identified a need in 1995 to present to senior management
and clinical staff key performance and clinical indicators. The Information
Technology Department surveyed several alternatives to deliver timely and
accurate information and selected a packaged software application that could be
customized and tailored to MHS’ management requirements. The system was
titled the "Executive Information System" (EIS). The objective was to
take the mountains of transactional data that is generated by a day-to-day
business operations and summarize it into high level information for
presentation on a personal computer. The system runs on a personal computer and
allows executives and managers to look at a great deal of information at a high
level with the ability to drill down to specific departmental information. The
information is updated daily and downloaded to a personal computer in several
minutes. Implementation
A task force of multi-disciplinary representatives was formed to identify the
key performance indicators required by MHS. Once identified, the IT Department
researched the source of the data requirements. The information was identified
to come from many different sources: downloaded reports from MHS’ core SMS
application such as admission reports, daily revenue reports, ad hoc reports,
and manual statistics. The objective was to pull information from the many
disparate systems so that it could be presented in a common format. In 1998,
additional business and clinical requirements were identified by a
multi-disciplinary task force to update key performance indicators by the major
business areas: acute, ambulatory, home health, etc.
The current system has three levels of indicators:
| Daily: |
Census data, daily revenue and outpatient registrations |
| Biweekly: |
Payroll and FTE indicators |
| Monthly: |
E/R waiting times, fiscal key indicators, month end census, etc. |
Time Frame
In 1995, the multi-disciplinary team initially met for several months to
identify the key performance indicators. The IT Department spent six months
researching options then coding the selected software tool set - Forest and
Trees Software. The system was tested with several executives and fine tuned
for ease of use. The total time frame from the task force to implementation was
one year. In 1998, the task force met for three months to identify the updated
key performance indicators. The IT Department spent another two months revising
and updating the EIS system. The system has been successfully installed and
operational since 1996. The 1998 upgrade and revised key performance indicators
are anticipated to be completed by July 1998.
Financial Profile
By using off-the-shelf software tools and the expertise of the IT Department
staff, the implementation costs were minimal. The software runs on personal
computers, which were already standard platforms on the executives’ and
clinicians’ desktops. Cost savings were identified by not measuring in the
elimination of paper distribution and faxing or reports to management. Increase
productivity was identified by giving management access to information faster
and easier than shuffling through piles of reports. Additionally, management
was not looking at the same information.
Outcome
Senior management uses the system on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis to
identify quickly both positive and negative developments and to take action
before a situation becomes a significant problem. Additionally, the system
forced data integrity by instituting procedures to the providers of the
information to routinely audit the sources of the information and respond to
management inquiries.
Current indicators include:
| Admissions |
Medical records utilization |
| ALOS |
Nursing worked hours per patient day |
| Patient days (Emergency room, Surgical procedures, Minor
procedures, SPU visits) |
Utilization denials |
| Total outpatient registrations |
Full-time equivalents |
| Emergency room wait/treatment times |
Overtime FTEs |
| Operating room utilization |
Salaries |
| Case mix index |
Average hourly rates |
| National LOS comparison |
Employees per adjusted occupied bed |
| Temporary employee FTEs |
Personnel turnover |
Best Practice Narrative is limited to a one page summary.
Supporting data is limited to one page.
|