ST. PAUL, MN – Lawson Software introduced its new Lawson Analytics for Healthcare on Monday, which aims to help providers make sense of staffing, clinical and financial data for better decision-making – something execs say will be increasingly important as ACOs become the new way of doing business.
"The healthcare industry is under tremendous pressure to reduce costs while simultaneously improving levels of care and patient outcomes," says Bob Ainsbury, Lawson's vice president of healthcare strategy. "The industry has been shaving costs, arguably, for a decade as the financial pressures have increased. In short, there are few simple savings yet to be realized."
[See also: Healthvision deal gives Lawson a platform.]
Scheduled to be generally available in May, the tool helps address that issue by providing timely metrics from across the organization, helping hospitals measure, improve and monitor their financial performance.
"It is designed specifically to improve operations and reduce costs, by connecting and correlating operational data and financial data," says Ainsbury. He says that one early client is using the product in support of "a new level of excellence in supply chain automation and efficiencies." Another use is for labor analytics, allowing organizations "to adjust staffing levels to quickly react to demand"
Ainsbury says that Lawson Analytics helps make that data, which is "typically buried in a variety of unrelated systems," accessible in real-time.
Able to extract data from Lawson applications as well as from non-Lawson systems, the tool was designed with providers' needs in mind. They were involved in "the design process at unprecedented levels," Ainsbury says.
One of the first customers to use Lawson Analytics – focusing on finance and supply chain improvement – is Catholic Health East (CHE), a multi-institution Catholic health system serving patients from Florida to Maine, and employing approximately 54,000 people.
“Prior to using Lawson Analytics for Healthcare, we had limited access to metrics to help us assess vendors, giving us a limited picture of vendor performance,” said Florence Doyle, vice president of supply chain for CHE. “Vendor performance is based on many key metrics, including on-time delivery, complete and accurate orders, and accurate shipping, which is what we refer to as the ‘Perfect Order.’"
She adds that the new Lawson tool "allows us to monitor a wide range of vendor perfect order metrics, follow data trends over time, and compare vendor performance by each CHE facility and region. This will help us partner with our vendors to improve performance and reduce costs over time.”
[See also: ACOs and meaningful use to go hand in hand.]
“Healthcare organizations need easy access to the most important business data to make better, faster decisions,” said Jim Catalino, general manager for Lawson Healthcare. “By creating Lawson Analytics for Healthcare, we can help simplify this highly complex task. Ultimately this helps our customers reduce costs, improve efficiency and enhance patient care.”
When asked to describe how technology like this will be useful in the big shift toward accountable care, Ainsbury has a one-word answer: "Very."
