If one set of lab tests is good, then two should be twice as good, right? It turns out the answer is no. More healthcare is not necessarily better healthcare. Choosing Wisely Canada, a campaign organized by a team of leading physicians in partnership with dozens of Canadian medical organizations, is offering guidance to help clinicians decide which tests, treatments, and prescriptions are unnecessary. Hôpital Montfort, in Ottawa, Ontario, is using Power BI to help provide its physicians with the evidence to help them make some of those wise choices.
Choosing Wisely Canada (CWC) helps clinicians and patients engage in conversations about unnecessary tests and treatments, and make smart and effective choices to ensure high-quality care. Unnecessary tests and treatments do not add value to care — in fact, they take away from care by potentially exposing patients to harm, leading to more testing to investigate false positives and contributing to stress for patients. And of course unnecessary tests and treatments put increased strain on the resources of our health care system.
Marc-André Lépine, Systems Administrator and Lead BI Architect, and Sébastien Landry, Director of Medical Affairs, both at Hôpital Montfort, were impressed with Power BI, and decided that lab utilization would be a great test case for using it to empower physicians with the evidence they need to focus their effort on the laboratory tests reduction initiative. Landry said of their test, “The power of Power BI is that … the data speaks for itself and lets physicians draw their own conclusions without any intervention from administrators.”
Learn more about how Hôpital Montfort and Power BI worked together to reduce unnecessary testing and treatments, and save money on health care while still providing world-class support in this case study.