Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island
(NHPRI) provides comprehensive, managed
healthcare services through a network of hospitals,
primary care, and specialist physicians in clinic,
group, and private practice. Driven by its mission
to serve the uninsured and underinsured, NHPRI
continues to concentrate its efforts on the
RIte Care program, the State of Rhode Island’s
managed Medicaid initiative. It is a non-profit
organization that currently employees 175 people.
In healthcare today, organizations must maximize
every resource, monitor every cost, and create
new efficiencies at every step. With systems
integrator Creative Computing and Cognos, NHPRI
did just that. The organization has implemented
a platform to help them make better, more consistent
business decisions, resulting in reduced costs
and enhanced operating performance.
CHALLENGES FACED
At NHPRI, executives had significant concerns
about their corporate data management practices—namely
that data was collected in silos. Decision-making
was done in isolation using different data sets,
and this resulted in inconsistencies and errors.
Questionable corporate data translated into
lack of confidence in the organization’s decisions,
reports, and analysis. A new approach was clearly
needed.
So NHPRI made a strategic decision to reinvent
the way data is captured, stored, shared, reported
on, and analyzed. Their new long-term business
objective: Create a true data-driven organization
that makes decisions based on a single version
of the truth, and drive it uniformly across
the enterprise.
As well, because it is a Medicaid based health
plan, NHPRI is required to regularly submit
hardcopy reports to the state on a monthly,
quarterly, and yearly basis. Employees who needed
a report simply sent a request to the IT department.
But due to the backlog, the department could
not deliver reports in a timely manner. They
needed to implement a solution that would enable
users to do their own report creation, freeing
up IT resources for other projects.
STRATEGY FOLLOWED
The first step was to consolidate all the organization’s
data into a single data warehouse using a new
SQL system. The organization then had to decide
which tools to use for analysis and reporting.
A single BI solution would enable a uniform
methodology for retrieving, aggregating, and
accessing data for all users.
NHPRI had a small Cognos PowerPlay deployment
already in use, and Cognos ReportNet seemed
a logical choice for their reporting environment.
Leveraging their existing implementation, they
re-started the Cognos deployment from scratch.
This way, they could build an enterprise-wide
data warehouse implementation through a central,
strategic rollout process.
NHPRI also spent considerable time evaluating
which reporting product would best integrate
with SQL and their proprietary and transactional
systems. The strategic partnership between Microsoft
and Cognos, the many Microsoft certifications
Cognos holds, and a track record of hundreds
of successful Microsoft implementations made
NHPRI confident that Cognos software would fit
their technology.
THE POWER OF PARTNERSHIP
NHPRI selected Creative Computing, a Cognos
business partner, to take them through the process.
The company’s role included understanding and
outlining the business requirements of the project.
They were also responsible for building the
first Framework Manager model, implementing
Cognos ReportNet, and training over 60 users
and 12 IT staff members.
“The combination of Creative Computing’s expertise
and the ease of use of Cognos software were
the key factors in our success,” says Mike Pitcairn,
Vice President of Services at Creative Computing.
“With Cognos, we are helping customers better
manage business cycles and realize faster and
higher return on investment. For these reasons
we are always pleased to bring our customers
next-generation business intelligence solutions
from Cognos.”
BENEFITS REALIZED
With Cognos, NHPRI has created a cost-effective
BI platform that delivers faster information,
better analysis, and improved decision-making
across the organization. What has been the biggest
impact? Users can now access data directly,
without the need for IT. Additional information
is also readily available—such as medical claims
and behavioral health claims. Most importantly,
they are accessing consistent data and working
with the same version of the truth.
Staff at any level can analyze data on a routine
basis, without involving higher-level personnel.
This allows NHPRI to better use its resources.
What’s more, reports are run four to ten times
faster, giving users almost instant access to
critical information—most queries take less
than 30 seconds. The organization is also able
to respond to inquiries from regulatory agencies
with concrete data and solid analysis.
The Cognos implementation is showing results
across several departments. For example, it
used to take a claims processor two hours to
generate daily operation reports. With Cognos,
the same reports are automatically generated
via the scheduler. The Claims department also
uses ReportNet to generate weekly reports and
monthly statistics to monitor its operations.
This has helped NHPRI to monitor its performance
against contractual and regulatory guidelines.
Meanwhile, Finance has built a series of reports
to monitor trends and identify significant variances
from pay cycle to pay cycle. This new capability
enables NHPRI to better monitor its overall
financials, and the activity takes three hours
instead of three days.
NHPRI also has better tools to manage the development
and monitoring of its Medical Expense budget.
Development time has been shortened by two weeks,
allowing more time to analyze and determine
drivers. Monitoring time has been reduced by
three days per month. And tasks that used to
take weeks now take days.
Marketing can now perform analysis on membership
trends as never before. In the past, the department
relied on Information Services to obtain member
lists for their metrics. This data is now available
for self-service reporting and analysis.
Finally, Cognos allows the Analysis department
to prepare standard recurring reports for other
departments. This way, the department performs
fewer recurring tasks and provides the requesting
department with instant access to information.
“The ReportNet implementation began as a reporting
solution,” says Sin Mei Ko, Director of Claims,
IS, and Facilities. “But it has become an important
analytical tool that has helped NHPRI to make
critical business decisions, respond to proposals,
manage our operations, and oversee our financials.”
About Cognos
Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence
and performance management solutions, provides
world-class enterprise planning and BI software
and services to help companies plan, understand,
and manage financial and operational performance.
Cognos lets you discover how you are doing,
why you may be off track, what you should do
about it, and where you should be going. Cognos’
top 100 enterprise customers consistently outperform
market indexes. Cognos serves more than 23,000
customers in more than 135 countries, and its
top 100 enterprise customers consistently outperform
market indexes.
Cognos performance management solutions and
services are also available from more than 3,000
worldwide partners and resellers.
Industry:
• Healthcare
Geography:
• Rhode Island
Information Needs:
• Eliminate data inconsistencies and errors
• Create a single source of corporate information
• Reduce reporting backlog in IT
• Save time and resources
Platform:
• Microsoft SQL
• UNIX
• Windows 2000
• Great Plains financial software
Solution:
• Cognos ReportNet
• Cognos PowerPlay
• Cognos Impromptu Web Reports
Users:
• 70+
Benefits:
• Consistent, single source of information
• Reduced IT intervention for reporting
• Fast, accurate reporting and analysis
• Reports are run four to ten times faster
