Fast Analytics team lauded by Health Data Management

The Fast Analytics team recently earned the “Project of the Year, Revenue Cycle” Analytics All-Star award from Health Data Management for saving the health system money and thousands of hours of staff time.

The Analytics All-Star program acknowledges organizations and individuals applying analytics in innovative ways that improves the health of patients and the financial performance of organizations.

“We are thrilled to win this award — we’re very passionate about what we do,” said FA Director Jonathan Greenberg, M.H.S.A.

The FA team of just five people worked primarily within Revenue Cycle Operations, a UMHS department which manages all aspects of patient service revenue. The team shifted to the newly-unified MSIS and MCIT departments, now known as Health Information Technology & Services.

Working collaboratively with various UMHS departments, the team strives to understand customers’ needs with the goal of streamlining problematic or unnecessarily complex areas of business. For example, it used to take Revenue Cycle staff hours to calculate health service charge estimates for patients. After examining the billing data, the FA team developed an automated calculation method that also includes an interactive graph; the process now takes mere minutes.

“Ultimately, our goal is to use data analytics in such a way that leads to better health and satisfaction for our patients while reducing UMHS expenditures,” Greenberg said.

In addition to helping staff within Revenue Cycle Operations, over the past five years the FA team has assisted more than 30 UMHS groups in using data from a variety of sources around the university to improve their decision-making process and/or decrease their costs.

“Data is something to be examined, explored, and, ultimately, explained,” Greenberg said. “Our team transforms data into knowledge everyone can relate to and understand.”

“Fast Analytics is an important component of UMHS’s Comprehensive Analytics Service and Support — or COMPASS — Program,” said Mary Hill, director of COMPASS and director of Data Management Services.

Hill continued, “Health care is generating data exponentially and UMHS is focused on harnessing this data to create new insights, improve processes, and manage risk. FA is playing a major role in this effort by partnering with UMHS departments and collaboratively developing solutions to quickly meet health system goals.”

Click here to learn more about Fast Analytics and if you have any questions, contact med.publishing@umich.edu.