Inselspital Bern University Hospital

INSELSPITAL, BERN UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL SAP NetWeaver® HELPS HOSPITAL ENSURE OPTIMUM PATIENT CARE QUICK FACTS

“The SAP business intelligence software enabled us to leverage a backlog of several years’ worth of extremely valuable data. . . . We simply couldn’t process this information before because of the sheer volume.” Martin Gerber, Chief Financial Officer, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital

Organization • Name: Inselspital, Bern University Hospital • Location: Bern, Switzerland • Industry: Healthcare • Products and services: Healthcare services and medical research • Employees: 7,100 • Web site: www.insel.ch • Implementation partner: SAP® Consulting

Benefits • Greater transparency of costs, business processes, and medical treatments Challenges and Opportunities • Faster reimbursement of insurance claims (via accelerated reporting) • Keep up with the growing needs of patients and continuous advances in medical • Streamlined reporting and analysis, technology, while reducing operating costs assuring faster and smarter decision making • Transfer resources from administrative to healthcare-related tasks Existing Environment Objectives • SAP ERP application • Provide a cross-functional information • SAP Patient Management application platform • SAP Supplier Relationship Management and Logistics for Healthcare package • Deliver actionable and timely information to all levels of the organization • Non-SAP software • Automate reporting and controlling Third-Party Integration • Comply with the Swiss REKOLE • Database: Oracle accounting standards for healthcare • Hardware: Sun SAP Solution and Services • Operating system: Sun Solaris SAP NetWeaver® Business Intelligence component Implementation Highlight Was 1st Swiss hospital to develop a REKOLE-compliant accounting and reporting system based on SAP business intelligence software

SAP Customer Success Story Healthcare

Why SAP • Unmatched integration and data analysis capabilities complementing the existing SAP environment • Realization of an IT strategy enabling hospital to incrementally eliminate non-SAP software

Inselspital, Bern University Hospital ranks as one of the top Swiss clinical hospitals and is the leading medical research facility in Switzerland. In order to keep up with the growing needs of its patients and continuous advances in medical technology, the hospital needed to make some internal changes. It needed to free up resources for healthcare-related activities and ensure transparent data organization-wide. The hospital opted for the SAP NetWeaver® Business Intelligence component to do the job. Now, with a central hub for collecting, analyzing, and consolidating business as well as medical information, the hospital can ensure it functions optimally while reducing operating costs. Ensuring the Highest Levels of Medical Care “The Swiss healthcare sector is reshaping due to the introduction of the diagnosis-related group system,” explains Martin Gerber, chief financial officer at Inselspital, Bern University Hospital. The system, known as DRG, is used to classify hospital cases into one of 500 or more groups. “Our hospital needed to adopt more effective IT tools to accommodate the DRG. In addition, we were facing increasing competition for patients and research grants – we needed to standardize medical services and enable more operational transparency.” With a staff of more than 7,000 people, including 1,220 physicians and medical researchers, Inselspital provides stateof-the-art medical care to almost a quarter million patients a year. As Gerber points out, “It is our responsi-

bility to provide the medical and business decision makers with the information they need to ensure we can efficiently deliver the highest-quality care to every single patient. SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence is the technical enabler that does just that.”

Complying with External and Internal Information Needs The main challenge facing Inselspital was an inability to process a large volume of existing data. The company also lacked the tools that would enable it to transform this data into useful information. The SAP® ERP application alone held about 50 million individual datasets that were necessary for calculating the hospital’s key performance indicators. “The SAP business intelligence software enabled us to leverage a backlog of several years’ worth of extremely

valuable data – from the details of medical treatments, such as materials and medication used, to patient and financial data. We simply couldn’t process this information before because of the sheer volume,” explains Gerber. The need for an effective business intelligence solution became even stronger when the Swiss cantons and health insurance providers instituted REKOLE, a set of standardized accounting practices designed to ensure the efficiency of healthcare providers nationwide. REKOLE required a radical redesign of the hospital’s existing accounting processes and hence the handling of data. According to Gerber, Inselspital needed a tool that would work well with its SAP ERP application and industry-specific SAP for Healthcare solutions. “We chose SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence because it could easily reside on top of our existing SAP applications, while enabling us to efficiently recombine data according to the various internal and external information needs,” says Gerber.

Pioneering the Swiss Healthcare Sector Inselspital is credited as the first Swiss hospital to comply with the REKOLE standards and move to a cost-unit accounting system based on SAP business intelligence software. Since the new specifications for the Swiss healthcare sector had just been issued, SAP had not yet introduced predefined business content.

“The SAP software gave us the ability to scour our oceans of data on a daily basis.”

Martin Gerber, Chief Financial Officer, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital

“Inselspital took the lead and developed data models and business content specifically for Switzerland, assembling a knowledge base that could be leveraged by other Swiss hospitals,” comments Gerber.

Oceans of Data The implementation team kicked off the project with a sound feasibility analysis and extensive testing period. With hands-on support and in-depth knowhow from members of the SAP Consulting organization, Inselspital had the software up and running in less than a year. Gerber attributes the

costs under control. For example, Inselspital employees can process insurance claims much faster now. This enables the hospital to collect on monies owed in a more timely fashion – keeping preliminary financing costs in check. Using SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence, Inselspital has also been able to centralize the formerly nonintegrated and often redundant controlling and accounting activities of nine departments. In addition to tapping new informational grounds and creating synergies, the CFO highlights the significant reduction in the time needed to create reports.

Gerber emphasizes that implementing business intelligence software is not a linear endeavor but an iterative process that challenges the existing organization at various levels and reveals weak points. He explains, “In several cases we realized that the quality of the data we had been collecting was insufficient for our needs. At other points we had to reconsider some of our key performance figures and even processes.” Even though Inselspital spent more than originally budgeted, Gerber expects a payback for the overall investment within three to four years.

A Cross-Functional Platform

“We are now able to generate ad hoc reports in hours versus several days and standard reports in less than a minute.” Martin Gerber, Chief Financial Officer, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital

successful implementation to strong support from top-level managers, early involvement of all affected departments, and focused efforts to improve data quality. Soon after go-live, the hospital began seeing benefits. “The SAP software gave us the ability to scour our oceans of data on a daily basis,” says Gerber, who then adds, “Having gained new insights into our organization, we were confident in moving forward.” With easy access to timely information and tools that enable detailed cost accounting, decision makers can now plan more effectively. In addition, managers can help the hospital keep its operating

“We are now able to generate ad hoc reports in hours versus several days and standard reports in less than a minute,” he says.

Bridging Two Worlds Together – Healthcare and Business While working closely with the SAP consultants during the implementation, the hospital began to build up its own internal resources and knowledge base necessary to extend its use of the SAP business intelligence software and to ensure continuity.

So far, Inselspital has been primarily using the SAP business intelligence software for the hospital’s administration, financial reporting, and data management needs. “However,” comments Gerber, “the SAP business intelligence software is not just beneficial for accounting and controlling activities. It provides a cross-functional information platform equally valuable to finance employees, the HR team, health professionals, and medical researchers.” He is convinced that the benefits delivered through the SAP component will increase as more employees begin to use the software on a regular basis. But that might take some time. “Not everybody is comfortable with change,” says Gerber. “But once the employees see the ultimate benefits, we feel they will adopt the software more readily.”

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Complete Transparency of All Activities and Services Inselspital plans to fully extend the footprint of the SAP business intelligence software throughout the hospital. “We want to provide transparent information and reporting capabilities to all areas of our business.” In the medium term, Gerber intends to integrate the non-SAP legacy applications with the SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence component. Inselspital will also continue to replace non-SAP applications with SAP software to leverage the benefits of a homogenous application landscape.

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