Spreading Visual Analysis throughout Barnes Jewish Hospital

Wow! So much information packed into the session. It was hard to take it all in. The audience was riveted, in part because healthcare is such a personal thing.

Opening the session, David Jacques, MD showed the visual analogy of images that continue to drill down, from high-level drawings of the body down to depictions of DNA. He likens that to what they now can do with Tableau. The more detailed the data gets, the better and more accurate the decisions they can make. He hit the point home that while trends and averages are great, he really likes to see variances and outliers. To that end, he wants access to ALL the data.

It’s Colleen Vlodarchyk, CNE’s job to manage overall patient care including staffing levels. As part of their LEAN initiatives, her teams looked at processes ripe for improvement. Managing labor hours in a constantly changing environment has been one of their biggest challenges. Without visibility, they couldn’t make the connection to budget overruns and staff who were clocking in early and clocking out late. She turned to her technical guru, Dr. Linh Dye who found Tableau. With just 4 IT resources and in just 70 days, Linh’s team was able to integrate data from disparate sources and create some initial reports. In fact, they had so much fun she admits they actually created too many so scaled back and created a web portal to their most important reports.

Faster than Colleen could come up with reporting ideas, Linh’s team responded with Tableau. Linh said using Tableau both easy and fun. Having created something they call a staffing board, Colleen and her teams can adjust staffing levels in real-time using data throughout the day. She has also been able to cut in half the amount of overtime paid. In fact, Colleen says she’s never gone over budget with staffing since implementing Tableau. David says his hospital is one of six out of 6000 hospitals across the US with access to this type and variety of information. Impressive!