Practice management reporting made simple with QlikView

GVI Oncology, South Africa's largest private oncology practice with nine facilities across the country, has implemented a cutting-edge business intelligence system to streamline its complex practice management reporting needs.

“We see more than 4 500 new patients each year and log about 158 000 patient contacts per year at the moment,” says Knowledge Manager Jan-Hendrik Esterhuyse. “We use Med-e-Mass for all our debtor management, but we were spending a lot of time writing reports and trying to understand all the information we were generating. QlikView has made the whole process much, much easier.”

GVI Oncology now uses the QlikView business intelligence software to understand and analyse the data from all its information systems, including Med-e-Mass as well as its payroll, performance management, time and attendance and patient register systems.

QlikView is also used to report on various surveys being done, such as patient and employee satisfaction. According to the company, analysing the Med-e-Mass data more intelligently allows the organisation to understand which chemotherapy drugs and treatments are being used by which practices and doctors, when and what is being paid by which medical aid and what is being paid slower than others.

“A lot of things that used to take me hours each week now happen automatically in QlikView,” says Esterhuyse. “For example, the practice managers at our nine different sites need weekly time and attendance reports for all their staff. Before, I had to query the database at each practice individually and compile the reports - it would take hours. Now it's all collated overnight while I sleep. The automation is one of my favourite things about QlikView.”

GVI Oncology also uses QlikView to analyse the treatment patterns and outcomes in all its facilities. According to Esterhuyse, this helps the organisation to treat patients according to evidence-based protocols so as to ensure the best possible outcomes for patients, at the lowest possible cost. According to him, the information is also used to build new costing models, which are used in negotiations with medical aids to increase its patient base.

Oncologist Dr Keith Maart, a member of the Port Elizabeth practice, uses QlikView to analyse new patient numbers and diagnoses, as well as referring doctor patterns. “Previously all our new patient data was collected manually,” he explains. “We had very little information on referring doctor patterns and their profiles in terms of tumour types were mostly estimated. Now I have immediate and accurate access to information. I can easily evaluate referring doctor patterns and see which referring doctors use me exclusively.”

The big difference, confirms Esterhuyse, “is that people in the practice can now easily analyse the data themselves - they don't have to ask me for special reports. The doctors and practice managers love it, because they get more accurate information, more quickly. And for the Knowledge Management Department, it means we can spend less time on routine queries and more time working on new ways to use IT in the practice. We have started implementing electronic medical records, which means we will be able to report on and analyse even more patient information in the future.”

“QlikView has met all our requirements,” says Esterhuyse. “So far there hasn't been anything we wanted to do but couldn't.”