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Let’s face it. No one likes to wait. Waiting causes anxiety, boredom, impatience and that niggling feeling of falling behind.
Yet waiting is inevitable. Statistics show that the average person spends five years waiting in lines, and six months waiting at traffic lights over their lifetime¹. The wasted time adds up.
So in a healthcare setting, how much time do we wait for reports? Most people would answer “too much”. At Polaris Strategic Solutions, we have placed a major focus on reducing wait time. It’s one of the advantages we offer our customers. Let’s break it down.
Most healthcare organizations measure their turnaround time in weeks or months. We’ve heard as high as a year. Clearly this is an area that is ripe for improvement.
At Polaris, our average design & development turnaround time is 2 days. This feature alone saves our customers weeks and maybe months of waiting each year. And faster turnaround means faster, more complete analysis…which yields greater efficiency and cost savings.
We anticipate future needs when we design our reports. Let’s take the example of a service line report. We don’t just write a report for the service line requested, we assume our customers may need to see other service lines in the future. So we design the report with a drop down box of all service lines for optimum flexibility. In this example, there is absolutely no waiting for the development of additional service line reports to meet future needs.
We regularly hear from grateful customers who got instant answers to new questions — simply because their existing reports were parameter enabled. They avoided the design/development cycle time altogether.
Furthermore, our Ad Hoc tool enables self-service queries for end users. This saves precious time for the IT staff. And it’s better than separate, departmental spreadsheets because the data source has been clearly defined and normalized. Accuracy and trust in the data is preserved while the thirst for information is quenched.
We’ve all been frustrated waiting for the screen to paint or a job to run. And the anxiety builds with each subsequent command. Slow response time is a real momentum killer.
At Polaris we have designed our system to open most reports in less than 10 seconds, many in less than 5. We are proud to say that even reports with extremely large data sets typically appear before the Jeopardy! Think Song completes (about 30 seconds).
Obtaining refreshed data for the reporting system is another area with significant wait times. This interval is dependent on the source system. It elongates when the refresh is performed manually. Polaris has report automation that allows our customers to schedule updates whenever they choose. Most often the refresh happens in the early morning so users have the latest information when they arrive at work. Of course the refresh can happen periodically — yielding near real time access to data that changes frequently throughout the day. As a result, waiting for updated data is minimized.
Polaris offers a distinct timesaver at the beginning of the process — when the request for work is made. Because of our unique business model, our customers never have to worry if there is money in the budget for additional report requests because we don’t charge by the report. We simply provide our reporting services for a single, annual fee. That’s all. Our customers can bypass the wait for expense approval and begin immediately with design and development of new reports.
Polaris agrees with Dean Koontz (author) who said “We are not born to wait. We are born to do.” We have multiple ways to eliminate the wait associated with healthcare enterprise reporting.
So next time you are waiting for a report to finish or data to update or an approval to spend money, think of all the ways that Polaris could lower your wait and free up time to focus on more productive activities. Then do yourself a favor, contact us immediately to find out more. Don’t wait.
¹various sources
