Business intelligence (BI) is becoming more essential for healthcare providers as they make critical decisions about accountable care organizations and how best to meet meaningful use requirements, according to new research from Orem, Utah-based KLAS.

The new KLAS report, Business Intelligence: Making Cents of Performance, looks into providers' current BI needs, market trends, and detailed vendor performance.

Among the key findings:

• The 'pay for performance' model and other reforms will force hospitals to more carefully analyze performance measures to identify inefficiencies, quality gaps, supply chain inadequacies and overall performance metrics.
• Although enterprise BI solutions are growing in acceptance, industry-agnostic solution vendors are still making a good showing in healthcare.
• Using BI to make key decisions is just the beginning; providers need their analytics solutions to help them perform predictive analysis with a reasonable level of confidence.

"Hospitals battling to reduce costs now face increased concerns over future reimbursements that are reduced due to payment reform," said Lorin Bird, KLAS research director and author of the new report. "The 'pay for performance' model and other reforms will force hospitals to more carefully analyze performance measures to identify inefficiencies, quality gaps, supply chain inadequacies, and overall performance metrics."

Although enterprise BI solutions are growing in acceptance, industry-agnostic solution vendors are still making a good showing in healthcare. Dimensional Insight's Diver Solution once again took the top spot in overall performance with a score of 88.2 of 100, followed by Information Builders' WebFOCUS. IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence, healthcare-specific vendor McKesson and its Horizon Business Insight product, and SAP XI Data Analytics (Business Objects) were also ranked in the report.

Though many, if not most, providers are trending toward an enterprise solution-using one vendor for all BI needs-some are adding department-specific consultants to fill gaps or allow for faster response time in specific areas of need. KLAS found that providers in this study were using 35 consulting firms, each of whom received high marks for results and service.

"Analytics – the art of collection, classification, analysis, and interpretation of data (also known as business intelligence) – reveals patterns, anomalies, key variables and relationships to better facilitate intelligent decision-making and will be essential to a hospital's ability to survive in the years to come," said Bird. "Using BI to make key decisions is just the beginning; Providers need their analytics solutions to help them perform predictive analysis with a reasonable level of confidence, basing multi-billion dollar decisions based on more concrete and reliable data points."

Other enterprise BI products highlighted in the KLAS report include Carefx Fusionfx Business Intelligence, Microsoft Amalga, Microsoft PerformancePoint Services for SharePoint, Oracle Business Intelligence and QlikTech QlikView. Noted but not ranked for clinical only products were Cerner Power Insight, Humedica MinedShare, Mediware Insight, and Omnicell Pandora VIA; noted but not ranked for mainly financial services were Lawson Business Intelligence and Oracle Hyperion Planning.