REDMOND, Wash. — March 7, 2012 — Life Care Centers of America has announced the successful deployment of a Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) solution in more than 200 skilled nursing facilities nationwide. The long-term care operator selected Microsoft BI to gain deeper insights into its key performance indicators for managers and executives across the organization. In the process of BI deployment, Life Care has experienced a noticeable difference in its operations by providing accurate and timely data.
For most of its 40 years, Life Care operated in a decentralized fashion. Fast growth and geographically dispersed locations made this the ideal organizational structure at the time. As the company grew, however, the company realized the need to have consistent, accurate and timely data for in-depth analysis and better decision-making. It soon became clear that the company needed a centralized BI system to fuel continued growth.
“Ultimately, it’s all about the care of our residents and, in our previous setup, data was only delivered fast enough for us to make reactive decisions,” said Mark Gooch, director of BI at Life Care. “We felt it was time for a modern, flexible business intelligence system to help support proactive decision-making.”
At first, Life Care considered solutions from other vendors. But those options were prohibitively expensive and would have required hiring and training additional IT staff to operate. Instead, the company decided to use Microsoft BI. Based on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, Microsoft BI offered a new yet familiar environment for Life Care’s existing IT staff. Managers and executives were also familiar with Microsoft SharePoint 2010, which provided the portal technology for its operational dashboards.
The solution went live in 2010 and is now automatically fed by data from financial, clinical and human resource systems. Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services imports, transforms and loads the data into a SQL-based enterprise data warehouse, which is then used to create OLAP cubes for advanced data analytics. Because of the automated nature of Microsoft BI, Life Care has reduced its IT support costs by 90 percent compared with its previous performance improvement system.
As a result of the implementation, Life Care managers and executives now have actionable data. Specifically, they have used their new labor analytic capabilities to combat unnecessary overtime expenses. Life Care is on track to see a multimillion-dollar reduction in overtime expenses through improved staffing practices and awareness.
“With the data we get from our Microsoft BI solution, we can now identify, measure and act upon potential concerns months faster than we could in the past,” Gooch said. “I’m very excited to see to how our Microsoft BI solution will positively impact the quality of care we provide our residents.”
More information on Microsoft Business Intelligence is available at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bi/default.aspx.
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