Health Authority Reduces Time to Analyze Surgery Trends from 2 Weeks to Less Than a Day

Helse Vest is a Norwegian regional health authority that operates 50 healthcare facilities and serving more than one million people.  Recently as part of a government-driven national safety program, Helse Vest hospitals and those in other regions were asked to collect, visualize and share medical data to identify quality measures and reporting requirements across all care teams and hospitals. To do that, each of the nine hospitals needed to combine data from all facilities in its region.Providing these reports was challenging though, because none of the hospitals had an easy method of combining and visualizing data.  As a result, reports took up to 14 days to produce, making it difficult for hospital staff to assess performance because the data was not recent enough to act on. Helse Vest sought a way to get data faster and visualize it in greater detail.  That’s when the organization learned about Power BI for Office 365.Using Power BI, Helse Vest conducted a proof of concept to gather and analyze data around the region’s Safe Surgery indicator, one of 14 medical quality measures.  With Power BI, Helse Vest analysts can easily combine data from different sources in a familiar tool and build analytical reports in less than one day.  “We now have real-time data, which means we get updated data metrics for the staff at each hospital. This will help us act on those metrics much sooner, while the metrics are still valid for the staff, and we believe this will have a significant and positive impact on patient safety measures.” says Anund Rannestad, Head of Innovation for Stavanger University Hospital.The organization’s hope is that eventually, all 26,500 employees throughout Helse Vest will be able to use Power BI to gather data and report on all medical quality measures. “We will be able to use the solution to show regional reports to the government to demonstrate that we’re following procedures correctly and running a successful health system in our region,” says Rannestad.  You can learn more about the Helse Vest solution by reading the more detailed case study here.