About
Western Health is one of the largest providers of healthcare in Victoria, caring for a vibrant, diverse and rapidly growing community of almost one million people in Melbourne’s western suburbs. With more than 12,500 staff, Western Health provides 800,000+ occasions of care every year.
Western Health manages acute public hospitals comprising Sunshine Hospital (including Joan Kirner Women’s and Children’s), Footscray Hospital, Williamstown Hospital, Bacchus Marsh Hospital and Melton Regional Hospital. Western Health also operates Sunbury Day Hospital, Boollam Boollam in Williamstown, Melton Health and Community Services, Bacchus Marsh Community Health Centre, Caroline Springs Community Health Centre, Grant Lodge Residential Aged Care in Bacchus Marsh, and the new Mental Health and Wellbeing Centre in Sunshine.
Challenge
Previously known as Djerriwarrh Health Services, this health service covered the Melton Health, Bacchus Marsh and Caroline Springs areas of Victoria before merging with Western Health in July 2021. The Executive Team struggled with inaccurate data and were heavily reliant on Excel spreadsheets to manage patient-centred services. The CEO understood the urgency to build a data-warehouse, accompanied by a cloud-based interactive reporting solution to resolve this issue.
Ager BI was commissioned to review the current data arrangements, build the data-warehouse and implement a set of accelerator healthcare reports offered by Ager BI.
Key areas of focus:
Solution
Ager BI began the project by meeting with the ICT Team to understand the location of each dataset, how it can be securely accessed and set up an area where the data-warehouse can be created. After identifying all data sources, Ager BI decided an on-premises SQL data-warehouse was required as this would provide the best solution based on the current IT infrastructure. To extract, transform and load cleansed data daily, Server Integration Services (SSIS) would be the most suitable tool to provide modelled data for Power BI reports, that would service areas such as patient activity, finance and human resources.
The executive committee, which Ager BI was invited to join to provide consultancy, agreed on a set of business rules and KPIs which defined how the visualisations and reports were to be developed. This process created a central source of truth for reporting, with the business rules incorporated into the SQL data-warehouse using SQL views.
As part of Ager BI’s product range of accelerator healthcare Power BI reports, the client purchased the full set of reports which includes Elective Surgery Waiting List, Finance, Inpatients, IPM Community, Outpatient Waiting List,
Outpatients, Roster On, Theatres, UNITI Community and Urgent Care. Ager BI tailored the reports to suit the exact requirements of the reporting needs of the Executive team. Using a Microsoft Power BI data gateway, data is securely loaded from the client’s onsite SQL data-warehouse into the cloud-based Power BI reports.
Benefits
The client benefits from state-of-the-art cloud-based dashboards and self-service analytical Power BI reports which are available via tablets and mobile devices for all executives and managers within the organisation. The executive team can now manage patient activity using factual data, whilst also monitoring key performance indicators to ensure that targets set by the department of health are achieved.
Data from sources systems is cleansed and loaded into a central SQL data-warehouse with business rules agreed within the executive committee. This provides a single source of truth for reporting purposes which negates the problem of two dashboards reporting different figures. The client benefits from a higher degree of data accuracy.
Ager BI was able to complete the project quickly due to our accelerator healthcare Power BI reports. This has taken the client from a low-level of data and reporting maturity to world-class interactive cloud-based reporting in only 7 months, with the solution delivered under budget for the organisation.
As part of our service offering, Ager BI trained a select group of super users, walking through each Power BI report step by step. A user guide assist super users when training all other staff within the organisation.
