Are you ready to start a business intelligence project in your medical practice?

Today’s BIG Ideas podcast describes a great place to begin — a charges dataset.  I think of a dataset as a table with rows and columns.  A charges dataset has a row for every procedure code and columns describing that procedure code.  For example, I would want a column for the patient, patient demographics like age, city, state, and zip, the amount of the charge, the procedure code and modifiers, the rendering and referring providers, primary insurance, location, primary diagnosis, and a lot more.  In a perfect world, that charges dataset would live in SQL Server and connect to Excel spreadsheets with Pivot Tables that automatically refresh.  All I would need to do is to open Excel to see the same analysis I had yesterday, only with fresh data.  Listen to today’s podcast for ideas on how you might use a charges dataset in a variety of settings to drive change in your practice.