Why You Should be Using Business Intelligence with NextGen

One of the hottest trends in healthcare right now is Business Intelligence, but you may be asking yourself what does that mean for you and your organization? Incorporating your NextGen clinical, operational, and financial data into a Business Intelligence software suite helps you take your investment in a structured database to the next level. Partner with TempDev to gain powerful insight into your NextGen EHR & EPM data by implementing a BI solution and take your NextGen reporting to the next level.

Business Insights NextGen Data Can Provide

NextGen Healthcare Ambulatory EHR and integrated Enterprise Practice Management (EPM) systems can collect millions of data elements daily. This data includes key indicators of how your practice is operating, performing financially, and the health of your patient population. If you're not thinking about BI, you're leaving critical insights unleveraged. This information includes transactions, denials, patient movements, appointments, labs, radiology, to name a few. 

This constant stream of information is known as "big data." Big data, generally, is a large set of complex data, which can uncover insights and solve business problems that cannot be done with conventional software or analytics.

Business Intelligence (BI) uses technologies, applications, and practices to collect, analyze, and present business information to support better decision making. BI draws upon several sources of big data generated in your organization, evaluating these datasets to uncover patterns that can provide meaningful business and clinical insights. Inclusion of NextGen EPM & EHR data in your BI can:

• Improve employees' productivity by gathering and analyzing workforce data.

• Optimize staff allocation by predicting appointment scheduling and minimizing fiscal waste. This helps avoid under- or over-scheduling of staff, which translates to more cost savings as well as improved morale.

• Identify inconsistencies in data among departments.

• Provide a better understanding of your patient population and the services they utilize.

• Analyze revenue streams.

• Help organizations redesign their workflows and enhance overall operational efficiency.

• Make it easier for practitioners to diagnose and treat diseases better.

• Locate high-risk patients to provide adequate interventions and preventive care, improving clinical outcomes, and reducing expenses.

NextGen's databases hold a wealth of information that can empower healthcare organizations to:

1. Use clinical data to improve patient outcomes.

2. Use operational data to improve workforce productivity and efficiency.

3. Use financial and claims data to improve the revenue stream for the organization.

Processing the NextGen data through a BI tool presents a more easily digested view of large data sets. Visualization tools such as dashboards and charts make the clinical and operational data easier to comprehend.

Improve Quality Scores with NextGen & BI

By building data sets that target the quality programs you're participating in, such as HEDIS, MIPS CQMs, and PCMH, you are able to gain meaningful insight into your patient population. Pair quality measures in a BI solution with TempDev's Quality Measure Dashboard NextGen EHR template to take your organization to the next level with quality reporting. The BI software can assist with identifying where the gaps in care are, and the Quality Measure Dashboard can help with closing the gaps in care for specific patients. The BI solution will also assist with trending reports so you can see quality improvements over time.

Business Intelligence Options with NextGen

There is a multitude of choices when it comes to selecting your BI solution, and they're all somewhat similar. Many organizations already have a BI solution but have never connected it to NextGen. The most common BI solutions we have worked with clients on are Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, and Domo. Our favorite is Microsoft Power BI because:

1. While visualizations are incredibly helpful, many organizations want to access very detailed information behind the visuals. 

2. Business users have the skillset needed to create reports, so report creation isn't always falling onto IT or the BI team.

3. There is an existing familiarity with Microsoft Office products so training and usage are intuitive.

4. Automatically incorporates with Office 365, which many organizations have already migrated to, so integration, installation, and licensing is straightforward.

5. Since NextGen runs on a Microsoft SQL Server database, connections are a breeze.

6. There aren't hidden costs or additional services and products pushed on you once purchased.

7. Reports export seamlessly to Microsoft Excel in a user-friendly format.

How TempDev Can Assist with Implementing BI with NextGen 

We have worked on a myriad of NextGen Business Intelligence engagements over the past few years, most commonly we partner with clients to:

1. Assist with the selection and implementation of a BI tool.

2. Partner with an internal data warehouse team to refine or correct ETLs needed for the BI tool.

3. Develop SQL scripts to aggregate data because internal BI teams might not be experts on the back-end NextGen database or end-user workflows required to make BI a powerful software tool.

If you are interested in implementing a BI tool or struggling with the one you currently have, the NextGen developers at TempDev can help get your BI tool performing at the level it should. Call TempDev at 888.TEMP.DEV or contact us here to start gaining insight into your NextGen data.