Sibley Heart Center Cardiology Uses QlikView to Analyze Twenty Years of Medical Records for Diagnostic Research into Children's Health

RADNOR, Pa., May 4 /PRNewswire/ -- With few benchmarks for best treatment practices in the field of pediatric cardiology, Sibley Heart Center Cardiology has turned to QlikTech's innovative business intelligence platform, QlikView, to inform its critical protocols for recommended patient care. The research, which will be shared with other pediatric cardiology practices, represents a significant step toward evidence-based medicine in a field hungry for more data-supported information.

Sibley Heart Center Cardiology was introduced to QlikView through QlikTech partner IPC Global Services who downloaded a portion of the practice's database in just 10 minutes. A pilot application was developed the very same day.  Using QlikView, Sibley's physicians can now query the 8 million rows of data in their practice management system in ways that were previously impossible or impractical.  They now get answers within minutes, instead of waiting a week or more for a simple request.

"We were continually frustrated with our inability to retrieve data because our systems just didn't make it possible," said Dr. Patrick Frias, a pediatric cardiologist and member of Sibley's Leadership Team. "With QlikView we can look back at decades of past diagnoses, treatments and outcomes to determine best practices. There hasn't been enough historical information like this in pediatric cardiology, so it's exciting to be able to develop our protocols based on years of aggregate patient information."

Sibley's doctors will use this historical patient outcome data to substantiate the need for a course of treatment to insurance companies with an indisputable fact-based rationale.  This unprecedented information access has not only allowed the practice to deliver the best care to its young patients, but it also helped improve its opportunities for IRB (Institutional Review Board) approval of research grants.

Executives at Sibley also use QlikView to manage the practice's 18 locations and staffing privileges at 40 hospitals throughout the state of Georgia to impact financial performance as well as quality of patient care.  QlikView replaced a traditional BI solution where the budget model had to be manually updated using spreadsheets.  Now data is automatically updated in intuitive dashboards.

Among ways Sibley operates smarter with QlikView:

• KPI Monitoring – easily track KPIs for pricing, payor mix, patient volume, cost per procedure, performance by location or physician, etc.
• Impact Analysis – rapidly assess the impact of scenarios. If the economic situation causes a shift in payor mix, Sibley can project how that could affect its financial performance.
• What-if Analysis – explore planning, budgeting and performance changes. For example, Sibley can model impact of a new service or new pricing for a specific test.
• Physician Analysis – monitor physician productivity to assess each practitioner's gross revenue performance.
• RVU Analysis – RVU (Relative Value Units) is a method of attaching values to procedures and is one of the ways Medicare, Medicaid and Insurance companies determine how much they will pay for a medical procedure.  Full visibility is valuable to ensure maximum reimbursements and to negotiate contracts.

"Healthcare providers need decision-support tools for instant visibility into massive amounts of data ranging from research to improve patient care to revenue cycle management to optimize healthcare delivery costs," said Tim Wassman, President of QlikTech Americas. "QlikView can quickly and affordably unlock the information trapped in healthcare systems and other applications and deliver it in an easy to use way that medical staff and operations executives alike use to make decisions every day."

About Sibley Heart Center Cardiology

Sibley Heart Center Cardiology is one of the largest pediatric cardiology practices in the U.S.  Sibley manages its own finance and claims data for its 18 locations with staff privileges at 40 hospitals throughout Georgia. Sibley's 40 physicians currently see more than 30,000 patients annually, providing comprehensive services for kids from birth to age 21, including prenatal, with congenital or acquired heart defects.  

About QlikTech

QlikTech's powerful, accessible business intelligence solution enables organizations to make better and faster decisions. Its QlikView product delivers enterprise-class analytics and search with the simplicity and ease of use of office productivity software. The in-memory associative search technology it pioneered makes calculations in real-time enabling business professionals to gain insight through intuitive data exploration. Unlike traditional business intelligence products, QlikView can deliver value in days or weeks rather than months, years, or not at all. It can be deployed on premise, in the cloud, or on a laptop or mobile device – from a single user to large global enterprises. QlikTech is headquartered in Radnor, Pennsylvania, with offices around the world and a network of over 1,100 partners to serve more than 13,000 customers in over 100 countries worldwide.

QlikTech and QlikView are trademarks or registered trademarks of QlikTech International AB. Other company names, product names and company logos mentioned herein are the trademarks, or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE QlikTech