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Can IT Save Our Hospitals?

Leading analysts find: Business intelligence helps University Clinic of Aachen

20 September 2006 -  European hospitals are working together with political and administrative authorities to provide measures for containing costs in the face of increasing economic and financial difficulties. In addition, doctors and nurses are suffering from working conditions in Europe that are contributing to the shortages of key healthcare professionals. Just this summer, an estimated 70,000 doctors in Germany have engaged in a 13-week-long strike to improve their working conditions and salaries costing hospitals up to $640,000 per day - spelling out serious trouble and jeopardising many hospitals existence.

"Saving hospital costs to invest in doctors and nurses seems to be a logical consequence for hospital directors," said Willi Janiesch, head of the Pharma and Health division at SAS' international headquarters in Heidelberg, Germany. "To stay with the example, German hospitals could save up to $512 million annually if they were more open to the use of strategic, analytical information technology for controlling and steering." SAS is the leading vendor of business intelligence (BI) software and services.

German University Hospital Aachen (UKA), for instance, will be able to a create a net present value after taxes of $6.5 million within five years after implementing a business intelligence (BI) platform, leading market researcher International Data Corporation (IDC) found in a recently published study sponsored by SAS. The UKA, one of Germany's largest hospitals with 5,700 employees, treats nearly 180,000 patients annually. The hospital was able to show a five year return of investment after taxes at roughly 570 percent; breaking even on their initial investment after a period of only nine months.

After implementing a business intelligence solution from SAS, the university hospital was able to optimise patient care and hospital facility utilisation; improve bill collection and increase revenue from the insurance provider; reduce internal staff time and costs of external services; and create key performance indicators for employee satisfaction, patient satisfaction and IT support.

The IDC-study "SAS BI Enables Optimised Controlling and Steering at UKA" is available for free at www.sas.com/news/analysts/idc_bi_0906.pdf.

About SAS

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  The Power to Know® .

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