A popular place for healthcare providers to begin developing business intelligence applications is with service line analysis. After all, most of the organization is already organized into service lines. Doctors and most other clinicians are hired into and practice in specialties. Facilities, equipment, supplies and medications are lined up this way as well. Insurance coverage is provided for specific types of services, and claims are generated, adjudicated and paid for these specific services. Most people inside as well as outside the organization understand service lines.

Despite this strong alignment along service lines, many provider organizations such as hospitals, physician practices and others struggle to get a clear, comprehensive picture of the performance of their service line portfolio. There are a number of obstacles to getting this picture. These obstacles can be political, procedural and technical in nature. Without such a picture, though, a provider organization can experience significant slippages in its day-to-day financial, clinical and operational performance. In addition, strategic investment decisions are likely to be severely hampered without a view into the trends and emerging patterns – both within as well as across service lines.

Business intelligence can help. First of all, business intelligence and analytics can help to get a comprehensive picture of the standard financial and clinical performance measures. But, perhaps more importantly, business intelligence can help the organization to build on these standard measures to find trends and patterns within each service line, across service lines and even across dimensions other than service lines.

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