From the Preface to Better Data Better Decisions: Using Business Intelligence in a Medical Practice by Nate Moore and Mona Reimers

This book is the medical practice manager’s data reporting manual. Like most of you, we have been medical practice administrators for many years.  We were repeatedly frustrated with the inability to efficiently get data out of our practice management systems in a format that mere mortals could really use with our shrinking budgets. We hope you will read this book and change the ways you gather and look at your data. This book is not about what to report or even what is important for your practice. It is about how to obtain the data (even those “unreportable data fields” your vendors tell you are not available) and what will now be an endless number of ways to look at your data. You will be delighted to know that gathering this data is also relatively inexpensive!

About two years ago, Nate Moore started consulting at Orthopaedics NorthEast, P.C. (ONE), where Mona Reimers is the current director of revenue services.  What started as a rather short-term education and data mining project limited to a single department at ONE quickly became an instant companywide success. And almost from day one, we knew we had something other practices should have.

Medical practice managers at all levels can benefit from a greater understanding of the data management tools available. In fact, many of these tools are already present in your computer systems. We have included many examples in this book to spark your imagination. You are welcome to use any of them as we designed them. We encourage you to go forward, think bigger, and then share your success with us.

Many times throughout the book, we tell you to have fun! There is something very enjoyable about finding a shortcut you did not know about or a gadget that keeps you from making a mistake. We hope that after reading this book and sharing it with your practice you find it as exciting and gratifying as we did. So read on and have fun!