Alliance Decision Support^® Optimizes Clinical Pathway Reporting for Children's Hospital Central California

The Issue
Children's Hospital Central California (CHCC), a 255 bed, free standing Children's Hospital located in Madera, California, needed a more robust reporting system for their already successful clinical pathways program.  CHCC developed their original pathway program in 1996 and employed it daily to standardize patient care and quality, tighten operating margins and decrease length of stay.  However, CHCC's lack of an integrated reporting system for their pathways program soon became an issue as (1) physicians required more timely review of utilization and cost variance reports prior to meetings, (2) external consultants and internal project teams requested more frequent ad-hoc clinical pathway analysis and (3) the organization continued to roll out several new clinical pathways each year.  To effectively address these issues, CHCC first attempted to develop a Microsoft Access system, to not only report on volume and utilization data, but also to integrate financial data into the system in a timely and efficient manner.  Following a series of unsuccessful attempts to develop this capability in MS Access, CHCC turned to Alliance Decision Support (ADS) in 2002 to effectively address their need for a comprehensive pathway transaction and reporting system.

What was the solution?