Queensland Health is managing increasing demand for services with a new financial decision support and reporting system built in Seagate Holos. Currently with 700 users statewide, the system has won a Gold Award for excellence* and is helping with a big push to cut waiting lists.
In the first year alone, the decision support system (DSS) saved Queensland Health $400,000 in reporting related IT expenditure.
But that`s not all. The real impact, says acting corporate finance manager, Bill Stewart, is devolved financial management, leading to greater accountability at a cost centre level.
"It`s been an excellent platform for financial reform, and that, for me is the major issue," he says. "It`s the ability to do a lot more, to manage resources a lot more effectively, that is really the winner.
Performance Measurement
"The business gain is bringing in key performance measures. This will allow us to budget on the basis of outcomes, or services provided, rather than funding or input. This is a 180 degree shift for us.
"Queensland Health is about improving the services and products that we provide. Reporting on performance is going to help us do that. This process is part of a government wide agenda called Management for Outcomes."
"It is being driven by budget pressures on a government funded health system with increasing demand for services."
Increasing Speed, Reducing Costs
The decision support system was aimed at increasing speed of access to data and reducing the rising costs of management reporting from the Queensland Government`s mainframe-based Financial Management System (QGFMS).
Essential was the ability to handle large volumes of data, be customisable, be centrally managed and used easily across the state. "That ruled out PC- and ODBC-based OLAP products that would have flooded the network," said Yellowley. "Queensland Health is geographically diverse and has huge amounts of data."
After a panel contract evaluation, Queensland Health chose Seagate Holos.
"We could not have done this system without Seagate Holos, for two reasons" Yellowley said. "It`s the only product with Compound OLAP Architecture (COA), allowing faster processing while providing end users with a seamless view. COA allows us to make best use of hardware and improves the response times on data retrieved."
"Second, as a flexible and powerful application development environment, it allows us to build both reporting and other business intelligence applications, with custom user views."
The system replaced the 300 mainframe-based IE reports generated directly from the QGFMS with 15 transaction screens built in Seagate Holos. Each of these screens then runs a user transaction report based on customised information. In both reporting and worksheet use, there are a lot of possibilities for end users to customise the system and set personal preferences.
Implemented in 1997, it immediately saved 6 days on end of month financial reporting. This meant decisions dealing with financial and performance issues could be activated a week earlier than previously.
Extending the System
During pilot phase it quickly became clear that a broader system, with ad hoc OLAP analysis capability, would greatly benefit cost centre managers, business managers and financial services staff.
A prototype finance and payroll-labour Decision Support System (DSS) was developed, allowing these groups to view, analyse and manipulate cubes of data customised to their area.
"The whole process of financial management has been substantially aided by this system," said Stephen Crane, financial operations manager at Royal Brisbane Health District. "Clinicians, doctors and finance managers now have accurate data at their fingertips. By devolving financial information we now have a system where, for example, we are getting well argued submissions for extra funding that can be easily assessed. These are helping to satisfy the big push in health to cut waiting lists."
Marian Linnane, Assistant Director of Nursing at Royal Brisbane Hospital and an end user, agrees: "This system is great because I can get information when I want it, even though only I need it. The biggest benefit is dealing with untoward events or discrepancies, as they happen, not six weeks later. I can respond earlier and ask for answers or put caps on spending."
The success of the DSS at the pilot phase led to a Queensland statewide implementation.
Sourcing the Data Warehouse
"What we did really well was incorporating payroll and other data sources," Yellowley said. "Now we have a DSS that works off integrated data."The right level of data with the right relationships was key. A good example of this is `cost of patient` data.
Queensland Health provides free hospital use, so financial data is not automatically linked to patient data. `Cost of patient` data is analysed on a cost-centre basis, through doctor-patient or ward-patient relationships. The nursing relationship is more complex. "There is a complex set of direct relationships that has to be in the data warehouse at a detailed level in order to get accurate analysis out," Yellowley said.
Today the system has a massive eight dimensions in its OLAP design and runs on two 8-processor IBM SP2 production machines. It accesses data from the QGFMS general ledger, the payroll database and also accepts external employee payroll details. By October, it will also access a SAP financial application and a Mincom Human Resources application that are currently being installed at Queensland Health.
Secrets of Success
"In order for this system to survive, we needed to attune it to the business environment and give our users what they need, which in our case is all about changing the outputs based on data from the day before," Yellowley said.
"Success is based on accuracy. The key is you have to have reporting consistency and control, which comes from standards. If you don`t have the right tools to put those standards in place, you`re lost."
"We did three things well," he said of the system`s success. "We chose the right product, put it on a good hardware platform, and our detailed bottom-up transaction oriented approach was good."
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