Forty-one percent of senior healthcare finance leaders say they aren’t satisfied with the way in which benchmarks for performance inform decision making at their organization, and 15 percent say they don’t use benchmarks at all, according to our annual Healthcare CFO report. Why? Leaders point to a lack of timely data—both their own data and peer benchmarking data.

To truly make an impact on financial performance, healthcare leaders must be able to analyze their performance across all levels.

They also need benchmarks that enable them to compare their organization’s performance against that of peer organizations for context. But there are numerous barriers leaders face in leveraging benchmarks to improve decision making and performance:

  • Leaders lack clean, consistent, and trusted data. It’s a challenge faced by more than half of senior healthcare finance leaders, limiting insight into where opportunities for improvement exist.
  • They struggle to access timely comparison data. External data typically is nine months to twelve months old. This lag diminishes the comparison value of peer benchmarks—and leaves leaders struggling to determine where their organization excels and where their performance falls behind.
  • They are challenged to find robust comparison data. In a transformative environment, simply reviewing the organization’s own budget variances is not enough to understand the organization’s financial performance compared with the broader market. Leaders also need benchmark analytics that compare financial performance across the organization and with peer organizations—by hospital, functional area, department, physician, as well as key operational characteristics and other considerations.
  • They lack the tools to identify and diagnose performance issues. Wading through financial and payroll data manually to identify areas for financial improvement is time consuming. Additionally, such efforts rarely result in the level of analysis or improvement that leaders seek to enable action.

Now more than ever, healthcare leaders require robust data and analytics to inform strategic and operational decision making. They also must be able to access data in as close to real time as possible to course-correct with agility and ease.

Remove the Barriers with Axiom Comparative Analytics

Healthcare leaders have lived with data handicaps such as these for too long. What is needed now is timely access to disciplined analytics based on robust, consistent benchmark data around quality, clinical outcomes, and cost. 

Our Axiom Comparative Analytics suite offers the industry’s only solution to remove the data and comparative analytic barriers that impede performance. It’s a tool that uses internal and external data in near real-time to pinpoint financial improvement opportunities.

The Axiom Comparative Analytics solution offers a breadth of key financial, payroll, and labor utilization measures from a strong cross-section of hospitals, functional areas, and departments. External comparison data are refreshed monthly, providing healthcare providers with the industry’s most timely access to financial analytics.

Key Features of Axiom Comparative Analytics

Timely and robust comparison data. With Axiom Comparative Analytics, data are drawn from internal and external sources on a monthly basis, rather than quarterly or annually. This ensures leaders have the most timely access to financial analytics available across all key dimensions, strengthening organizational decision making.

Attributes of the Axiom Comparative Analytics solution include:

  • Robust comparison data from 500+ unique departments across more than 650 hospitals
  • Access to a wide array of healthcare financial metrics, including financial health, volume, revenue, expense, and labor
  • Automated normalization to the organization’s own data definitions 
  • Integration of data from Axiom Budgeting and Performance solution, which eliminates the need for data submission

Analysis and reporting tools. Axiom Comparative Analytics enables normalization of data through a uniform classification process. It’s a process that dramatically increases the number of financial, payroll, and labor utilization metrics and measures available for comparison. This empowers leaders to identify root-cause issues of underperformance and take action immediately for improvement.

Metrics Explorer

Our Metrics Explorer is an interactive dashboard that enables leaders to quickly assess financial performance and drill through to detailed reports or next-level metrics. With these capabilities, leaders can quickly uncover performance opportunities, perform root cause analysis, and monitor performance improvement efforts. Dashboards can be tailored to the needs of organizations or user types.

Data Explorer

Our Data Explorer performs data comparisons using internal and external sources. This analytical tool drives freeform interaction with the data, and highlights key areas of focus, identifies root causes of underperformance, and aids leaders in developing strategies for corrective action. Analysts and department managers can easily interact with internal and peer comparison data to pinpoint areas of underperformance, both in relation to internal performance and compared with peers.
 

Find Out More

With a pressing need to control costs and improve performance, healthcare leaders increasingly are turning to technology to gain timely access to data and strengthen analytics capabilities. We are pleased to be the nation’s leader in healthcare data and analytics solutions. 

Learn more about Axiom Comparative Analytics