CLEVELAND – There was no lack of data when the Cleveland Clinic tried to analyze why payers rejected its claims.
The world-renowned organization had built a denial database to collect that information, and it also had a home-grown application to work through those denials.
But the data and workflow application didn’t give the clinic the flexibility it needed to easily analyze the data. Moving to a more interactive and flexible data analysis tool provided a better glimpse into trends.
The use of the data analysis software provided a significant return on investment, said Josh Berman, the Cleveland Clinic’s senior manager for electronic claims and denials. The organization has used the application for about a year, he said.
Part of the benefit of using the data analysis software, developed by Tableau Software, was to aid in the manipulation of the huge quantities of data the clinic had amassed – more than 200 relationships in SQL tables.
Just the sheer amount made interactive analysis nearly impossible, Berman said.
“We didn’t have granular reports; we had monthly reports,” he said. “Using applications like Excel and Access to analyze it had limitations.”
Tableau’s application is focused on use by the knowledge worker, everyday worker or analyst, said Elissa Fink, vice president of marketing for the company. The underlying technology makes massive amounts of data visual.
“People can see patterns more rapidly when their visual, and they can get to that data that they’d normally have to get from a programmer,” she said.
“With Tableau, you can pull your own queries and can create monthly reports that are super-fancy,” she said. “These state-of-the-art reports can give you a picture of denials from the last month.”
In addition to allowing drill-downs into aspects of denials, the software enables Berman’s department to create visually attractive reports that help communicate important findings. For example, use of Tableau’s application helped identify a recent spike in denials by Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield and then communicate the issues to the insurer.
Trending also helps Berman identify departments in the organization that may need to do things differently to prevent denials.
“Being able to communicate that information is really important,” he said. “The software gives me something very nice to present our trends.”