Fast-Tracking Health Infrastructure Insights and Strategies: Case Study

The Challenge

An Australian Health Infrastructure State Agency (HI) is implementing a comprehensive Asset Management Framework (AMF) across its 15 districts, over 40 Health Entities (HE), more than 2000 properties such as hospitals and clinics.

The primary goal of the AMF is to collate and create an evidential basis for understanding the asset performance across the HEs in terms of cost, risk, and physical performance over time.

On an annual basis, every HE will be required to submit a list of AMF artefacts that would outline the key works and funding required to sustain their respective asset portfolios and deliver the required level of service based on their specific health service mix into the future, which then informs the overall state-level asset planning process.

HI had some existing data and Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities but needed to build a repeatable end-to-end solution in a short time frame. With data scattered across multiple files and formats, HI was seeking a solution that could:

• Collate artefacts into single dataset in support of developing a whole of HI state-wide view
• Identify a range of insights and trends in support of understanding risks, performance, opportunities, costs across the portfolio and AM practice
• Support the communication with a range of stakeholders (including senior leadership) at Department of Health, HI, and various HEs

HI engaged Quarterbac (QB) as the delivery partner as QB’s team understood HI’s vision and possessed perfect domain expertise to deliver the solution.

Complication

Up to 15 data tables are collected each year from 40 HEs.

There were ample data collected by HI offering great opportunity for a standardized aggregated view. The data being stored across multiple data files also resulted in a lack of visibility and interpretation of data at portfolio level.

First Steps

PowerBI is the native visualisation platform used by HI and initial work revolved around envisaging a functional multi-level data structure for the different datasets.

Two notable advantages include:

Efficiency and Speed

Ability to leverage on BI tools for repeatable data extraction and transformation process which eliminates any manual data work required and significantly reduces processing time and eliminates human error.

Enabling Clear Line of Sight at various levels

Meeting the needs of the different stakeholders to slice and dice or access to aggregated artefacts.

Solution

Leveraging on its asset management expertise, QB was able to rapidly identify all relevant datasets and information required to meet the immediate reporting needs of HI.

QB created an efficient, repeatable process that ingests data from multiple sources and formats into a Power BI central data repository.

Designed reports with easily digestible information that aligns with asset management best practices that reveal trends and insights at various asset and agency levels.

Next Steps

HI are seeking to drive efficiency across the portfolio by building upon the capabilities within the AMF and insights obtained from the solution.

These efficiencies will be generated by identifying, validating, and committing alternative investment strategies that deliver the required level of service through the asset portfolio with a lower whole-of-life cost.