Pyramid Analytics enables executives at St. Joseph’s Health—one of the largest hospital systems in New Jersey—to access clearer, more dynamic, more strategic ways of visualizing financial and clinical data. Where static daily reports were once the norm, simplified interfaces and sharing capabilities allow for consistently better decision-making at the highest levels of the organization.
Based in Paterson, New Jersey, St. Joseph’s Health is a hospital and healthcare system that includes the St. Joseph’s University Medical Center, Children’s Hospital, Wayne Medical Center, and other management units across multiple campuses. The system also includes more than 30 New Jersey community-based facilities. Regularly recognized among the top hospitals in New Jersey, the hospital system also provides award-winning healthcare services to the New York Metropolitan Area.
As St. Joseph’s Health wrestled with rising costs and a more competitive medical environment, analytics leaders at St. Joseph’s Health were keen to use business intelligence (BI) and analytics to increase financial performance, negotiate better rates with insurers and payers, and negotiate better costs without impacting the quality of care. But despite a huge IT infrastructure that spans all its primary management units, senior decision-makers continued to use static, manual data reporting.
“St. Joseph’s Health was among the 70% of organizations that had BI in place, but nobody was using it,” says the Vice President of Global Solutions Engineering at Pyramid Analytics. “What’s great about this story is this: It was their CEO who asked to get more out of their analytics investment.”
Executives needed sophisticated data presented to them as simply and clearly as possible, shortening their path to successful decision-making. Christopher Pierznik, Director of Enterprise Analytics at St. Joseph’s Health, led the way in transitioning the organization to a more modern way of telling stories with data: “visualizing what is happening not just today, but this month, quarter, or year,” as Pierznik describes.
“I interviewed executives with a ‘what would you like to see, what we can do for you’ approach and aligned those needs with our existing Pyramid Analytics solution,” says Pierznik. “They realized they could get the insights they needed with just a few clicks rather than waiting for a static report.”
As an enterprise-grade BI and analytics platform, Pyramid Analytics supports full-service workflows in a governed environment. But unlike other BI tools, Pyramid Analytics enables non-technical users to easily prepare, modify, and visualize data for more informed business decision-making—even among time-sensitive executives.
“That was the starting point—we realigned data that was once in an email or spreadsheet to create a visual ‘quick hit’ of what was happening that day,” says Pierznik. “In time, our senior leaders realized they were using tools they only had heard about at other companies.”
Executives could now access data and trends in a simple dashboard and then make qualitative judgments based on the results. In time, they moved beyond simple line charts to understand the data behind them—a natural transition from the static numbers to which they were accustomed to a more meaningful way of understanding their business.
Pyramid really helped bring me and my team along, and have helped us every step of the way—and continue to do so,” says Pierznik.
According to Pierznik, their current realignment with Pyramid Analytics is only the beginning—a foundation for what’s to come on the organization’s analytics journey. “I will preach about the greatness of Pyramid Analytics, especially since I wasn’t a data guy, I came from finance,” says Pierznik. “They helped us every step of the way, day and night, and continue to lead us in the direction we want to move.”
Our senior leaders were skeptical, but when we gave them just a taste of what Pyramid Analytics could do, they said ‘Wow, this is great, we want more of this right away.’ Now that our executives have been turned on to data, we’ve got their attention in a much more proactive, interactive way.