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Baylor Health Care System implements SAS® software to evaluate technology effortsSAS® Enterprise Miner™ to play a key role in determining the return on investment for electronic health records and other clinical improvement programmes14 February 2005 - Spending on information technology for healthcare providers is on the rise, according to nearly half of the 307 chief information officers (CIOs) and directors of information systems responding to the 15th Annual HIMSS Leadership Survey. Better than half of all respondents said their facilities would plan to adopt personal digital assistants (PDAs), bar coding technology and speech recognition over the next two years, and nearly two-thirds of those surveyed said they had either planned to implement an electronic health record (EHR) system or had already begun the installation of EHR-related hardware and software. While healthcare IT spending may be on the rise for some providers, budgets are tight nonetheless. How can hospital administrators determine which IT systems are delivering the best return on investment? Baylor Health Care System expects to find the answer to this question and many others using software from SAS, the leader in business intelligence. By using SAS® Enterprise Miner TM in conjunction with other integrated components of the SAS®9 Intelligence Platform, researchers can measure and analyse quality improvement efforts related to the provider's $119 million clinical transformation initiative. "Many healthcare providers are making substantial investments in new IT systems largely based on faith," said Jim McPhail, vice president of enterprise services for Baylor Health Care System. "We tapped SAS for powerful, flexible business intelligence software that will help us create synergy between our healthcare research initiatives and our quality improvement efforts." In 2002, Baylor Health Care System began a seven-year effort to redesign its clinical processes and to seamlessly link information throughout its network of 11 hospitals, 69 clinic sites and numerous physician practices. This clinical transformation includes investments in IT and changes in the way patients are treated - all with an eye toward using evidence-based decision making to improve care. The goal of the clinical transformation is to generate a single, secure electronic health record (EHR) for each patient treated in the Baylor Health Care System. Accessible through a handheld or desktop computer, these EHRs will be extremely valuable to clinical care providers by improving the collaboration between clinicians in the management and delivery of patient care. Of perhaps greater significance in the long term, the use of EHRs will also produce a deluge of clinical data that can be used by biostatisticians and clinical scholars using SAS software to conduct research pertaining to healthcare quality and effectiveness. The insights derived from this research will be deployed in the operationally focused healthcare improvement initiatives of Baylor Health Care System. "Our clinical transformation encompasses a large number of improvement efforts, including electronic health records, computerised physician order entry, medication management processes and clinical documentation," said Neil Fleming, PhD, vice president of healthcare research for Baylor Health Care System. "We will use SAS software to quantify the value of each of these initiatives." Baylor Health Care System will also use SAS software to sift through vast amounts of data generated internally and available from external sources, including the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), Texas mortality data and national Medicare claims data. By analysing information from a wide range of sources, clinical scholars will make an effort to identify certain segments within Baylor Health Care System's patient population that may respond favourably to clinical intervention. For instance, analysts will use SAS in a randomised trial to evaluate a new programme that provides transitional care to elderly patients moving from in-patient to discharge status in an attempt to determine if these treatments can improve outcomes. SAS turns raw data into powerful insights that healthcare leaders can use to solve specific challenges. SAS transforms questions into approaches that can be tested and validated to provide answers. This reduces uncertainty, quantifies variability, refines processes and helps allocate resources with greater precision. SAS doesn't just provide historical insights; SAS also provides predictive insights into the future. In addition to transforming data into intelligence, SAS assures that this intelligence is available to those who need it and in whatever format they choose. Whether they require electronic distribution of reports, interactive query environments, delivery of content via a Web-based portal or publish-and-subscribe channel distribution of information through e-mail, SAS delivers. Today's announcement was made on the opening day of the 2005 Annual HIMSS Conference & Exhibition, where SAS is exhibiting in Booth #7428.
About Baylor Health Care System
SAS is the leader in business intelligence software and services. Customers at 40,000 sites use SAS software to improve performance through insight into vast amounts of data, resulting in faster, more accurate business decisions; more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; compliance with governmental regulations; research breakthroughs; and better products. Only SAS offers leading data integration, intelligence storage, advanced analytics and business intelligence applications within a comprehensive enterprise intelligence platform. Since 1976, SAS has been giving customers around the world
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