Nowadays, healthcare organizations produce and store more data than ever before. In accordance with the zeitgeist, they become more and more digitally-driven. From electronic medical records, financial metrics to industry health statistics, all this information constitutes a massive amount of data. Add to the equation policy details that insurance companies provide and clinical trial results from pharmaceutical companies, and you have what many experts call some of the most complex data storages on the planet.

At the same time, the domain of healthcare is facing challenges like the emergence of severe diseases (hello, COVID-19) and rising industry costs. In this article, I’m going to explain why the use of Power BI is growing in the healthcare industry. You’ll find out how its powers positively impact the bottom line and improve the quality of patient care while ensuring safety in accordance with government regulations.

Power BI

A part of Microsoft Power Platform, Power BI contains a built-in AI engine and connects to other Microsoft products (Excel and SharePoint) to represent data via various dashboards and reports. Perhaps, the Power BI’s strongest suit is its convenience and ease to use.

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Healthcare providers can use BI templates to process, visualize and analyze this massive amount of data effectively. All this info is stored and processed instantly via Power BI streaming solutions together with Microsoft Azure cloud services. Such tools can help decision makers progress towards strategic goals by offering comprehensive leadership that simplifies the way organizations operate at all levels.

Healthcare costs

Healthcare costs are rising at an unprecedented level. Deloitte's report claims that global healthcare spendings are likely to grow by 4.1% yearly from 2017-2022. In regard to such figures, it is increasingly important for providers to manage these costs. 

Power BI allows healthcare providers to get more information about their financial transactions and work efficiency. This helps organizations monitor their cash flow and make appropriate adjustments to optimize it.

BI can also help healthcare providers identify highly profitable or underutilized services by generating the analysis they need to set prices. What's more, they can control costs, allocate employee time, and process claims more efficiently. Power BI dashboards can help organizations determine the effectiveness of their marketing efforts.

Improved patient care

In 2019, the per capita healthcare rate in the United States became one of the highest in the world. Considering these costs, patients should expect better healthcare services, shouldn’t they?

In this regard, BI can help healthcare professionals improve patient care and analyze quality and safety trends. BI dashboards can provide information to manage better logistics, such as patient flow in distribution or optimal patient discharge times. In a nutshell, business intelligence enables clinicians to make informed decisions and monitor the diagnosis of patients.

Let’s see some examples from real life. Oslo University Hospital chose the Power BI cloud service to accelerate the collection and analysis of data, improve the quality of medical care and improve the interaction between employees from different branches and organizations of the healthcare system.

Effective tools for business analysis provide medical researchers at the university with up-to-date information about the frequency, quality, territorial specifics of research, and the condition of equipment and medicines. They help doctors make more accurate diagnoses and help management reduce IT support costs and find additional funds for the development of the medical institution.

“Full collaboration with regional healthcare providers is one of the most important areas for us to use Power BI. In the past, combining streams of disparate information was very labor-intensive. But with Power BI, we started doing data analysis much better and faster, ”said Karl Oiri, an employee of the Center for Medical Intervention at Oslo University Hospital.

Gaining an expert opinion with BI

An overarching Power BI strategy is important to healthcare professionals. While some organizations may think of it as a simple way of presenting data, BI offers much more than that. An advanced third-party administrator can optimize the BI strategy for service providers and deliver the results they are looking for. They can help their customers secure a real competitive advantage from their IT vendors by providing them with the experience, services, and scale they need to optimize the business value of their mission-critical technologies.

Compliance with regulations

Federal health systems require healthcare professionals to take regulatory requirements seriously, and there’s no use to explain why. This way, compliance with HIPAA requirements is essential.

To meet complex regulation requirements, healthcare providers must have quick access to many financial and patient regulation data. Power BI can help collect, organize, analyze and present data to audit authorities, which will reduce the likelihood of sanctions or penalties for non-compliance by healthcare organizations.

To sum up

In regard to the factors above, it’s understandable why both internal and external players in this industry need data and analytic tools to achieve their business goals. Using Power BI, researchers and executives interact more productively with colleagues in their hospital and other healthcare facilities. They take a full-fledged part in the discussion of the results of diagnostics, radiography, MRI, CT, and other methods. Besides, it’s easier to track the frequency and geography of a particular disease's geography, analyze the effectiveness of therapy and monitor the state of medical equipment. Plus, managers at all levels can make informed decisions to effectively plan the activities of a medical institution.

Let’s sum up the benefits of Power BI tools for medical institutions. Such solutions can:  

• Highlight critical data and patterns;
• Provide clean data visualization;
• Impact decision-making by making data accessible;
• Provide actionable clinical insights; 
• Unify data management across various departments.

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