Avatar Satisfies Patients, Improves Federal Reimbursements With WebFOCUS and iWay
Company Size
200-1,000
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- WebFOCUS
- iWay Data Quality Center
- iWay Service Manager
- iWay Data Migrator
Tech Stack
- Microsoft SQL Suite
- Interbase database
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Cost Savings
- Customer Satisfaction
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
Applicable Industries
- Healthcare & Hospitals
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
- Quality Assurance
Use Cases
- Predictive Quality Analytics
- Regulatory Compliance Monitoring
Services
- Data Science Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Avatar Solutions is an innovative research, analytics, and performance improvement company that serves more than 600 hospitals and 13,000 providers throughout the U.S. The company works with some of the best-known healthcare organizations in the nation, supplying accurate data, a top-notch online reporting system, and intuitive action-planning tools that help these healthcare providers improve engagement levels and boost quality of service. Avatar's comprehensive suite of healthcare survey tools has received the exclusive endorsement of the American Hospital Association. It has more than 30 years of experience helping healthcare organizations collect patient and employee satisfaction data. Its consulting arm also helps clients establish survey objectives and implement improvement measures. Avatar specializes in CAHPS, patient satisfaction, employee, and physician surveys.
The Challenge
Avatar Solutions, a company that provides patient satisfaction, employee, and physician surveys to more than 600 hospitals and 13,000 providers, was faced with the challenge of streamlining reporting, bolstering analytics, and improving data quality. The company needed to ensure that its clients continued to receive accurate performance data as the foundation for quality improvement initiatives. The healthcare industry was rapidly evolving, and with the passage of the U.S. Affordable Care Act, an expanding array of government regulations and quality metrics began to influence Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements. For example, patient satisfaction scores became a part of a hospital’s Total Performance Score (TPS), which measures how well healthcare organizations perform with respect to important dimensions of care and service – directly impacting their Medicare reimbursement dollars. These industry dynamics made it even more important for Avatar to develop flexible data management and reporting procedures.
The Solution
To address these challenges, Avatar engaged Information Builders to create a business intelligence (BI) and data integrity environment called ImprovingCare. As part of this initiative, Information Builders helped Avatar develop comprehensive data governance procedures, a new set of analytic dashboards, and a user-friendly online reporting system that provides real-time access to survey results. The quantitative feedback derived from this system enables Avatar to advise clients on quality issues and boost federal reimbursements by helping them exceed healthcare quality standards. Avatar uses the WebFOCUS BI and analytics platform to access and display this data through interactive reports and dashboards that can be customized for many types of users, based on their roles and levels of authorization. iWay Service Manager extracts raw data from an Interbase database, transforms it into a relational database structure, and loads it into a Microsoft SQL Suite data warehouse optimized for end user reporting. iWay Data Quality Server (DQC) cleanses the data as it is loaded.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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