Interviews

QUESTIONS ASKED:

  1. What’s the hardest part for you when it comes to using reporting in your job?
  2. Tell me about the last time you encountered that problem?
  3. Why was this problem challenging for you?
  4. What, if anything, have you done to try to solve this problem?
  5. What don’t you love about the solutions you’ve tried already?

INTERVIEWS PERFORMED:

INTERVIEWEE 1: Performed on 10/9/2020 at 3 PM via Microsoft Teams:

Interviewee is a manager of one of the reporting and analytic teams for the company.

    1. Emotionally the manager sounded exhausted. Frustrations included constant leadership demands for more reporting without attempts to see what might already exist, one time ad-hoc requests that derail current planning/build, and a lack of ability to prioritize across a company with multiple/varied reporting needs in which each leader says their problem is the most important one to work on.
    2. This manager values her employees most of all. The concerns raised in point one often have serious impacts on the people reporting to her. Lack of talent and staffing make this particularly challenging as she worries about employee satisfaction and retention.
    3. The manager is trying to bring in more staff to help reduce the strain on her current employees and allow for time to train experienced employees on new tool sets so that they can build better analytic tools for the report consumers. She is also attempting to work with leadership to establish a more formalized reporting request process in which existing tools and reports are first looked at to see if there is already an existing solution to the question. Along these lines, self-reporting is a key factor in that it empowers the users to build their own analytics and rely less on our report analysts to build their less complicated analytic solutions. 
    4. The most frequent solution is to throw bodies at the problem and backlog requests until time can be found to review, determine if there is already an existing solution, and then to communicate back to the requester.
    5. Currently there are 10 report developers at different experience levels reporting for the whole EMR software which supports 10,000 users throughout the organization. This keeps report requests backlogged and support staff overworked. 
    6. She depends on her report developers to help her handle scope and priorities as they are the source of knowledge. She depends on leadership to ensure that there are enough positions open so that she can staff the team.
    7. Her team is consistently burnt out working long hours. Churn is a serious concern and loss of her more experienced developers could create a serious setback in the current reporting environment.

INTERVIEWEE 2: Performed on 10/12/2020 at 9 AM via Microsoft Teams

Interviewee is a manager over Revenue Cycle and has a background in statistics

    1. This user sounded really excited to talk about data. He enjoys putting together complex solutions from different sources and lining data results up to dashboards reported from other areas or vendors. 
    2. This user values access to broad amounts of data in their day to day job. He enjoys collating the different data sources to create his own unique flavor of dashboards and analytics. 
    3. At an organizational level there are leader level dashboards that aggregate different levels of data into a simplified holistic view of the overall health of revenue cycle operations. This user often spends time using the data sources he has access to, to recreate these dashboards with the more detailed information that he needs for analytics. 
    4. Currently this user will pull several different reports from our EMR as well as other billing systems and using excel will tie these data points together in an attempt to recreate the leadership dashboards.
    5. Because this user does not have access to the queries that are used to build the leadership dashboards, trying to replicate this opaque process can be challenging and he is often not able to balance completely to his own expectation of mirroring these dashboards.
    6. This user is a self starter. He tends to go out and use the tools that are made available to him and only searches out people who may be able to give him access to data sets he doesn’t currently have access to. 
    7. This user is definitely excited to have data. His ideal solution would involve a one-stop shop where he can collect many data points from many areas within the company. 

INTERVIEWEE 3: Performed on 10/13/2020 at 1:30 PM

Interviewee is a reporting analyst within Revenue Cycle via Microsoft Teams

    1. This user sounds a little tired of how she currently goes about her reporting day. Report requests are non-stop and tend to leave her in a state of always behind.
    2. This user values the integrity of the analytic reports she generates. Mistakes tend to frustrate her. 
    3. The user builds excel reports for various Revenue Cycle managers and leaders within the organization.
    4. Currently this user runs many reports out of our EMR related to billing and then takes these different reports into excel where she lines up data via related keys to build more detail into her solutions. 
    5. Because data is often aggregated differently, i.e. one report may have one account per row while another can have multiple, she often spends a lot of time ensuring that she does not duplicate her summations during her aggregations. The overall process can be time consuming and often prone to unforeseen complications. 
    6. She tends to start with her reporting manager when looking for solutions and will generate report requests to the main reporting team managed by Interviewee 1 when the data she needs is not easily found or in a format that’s consumable.
    7. This users concern for mistakes may slow down her ability to quickly return results for end user requests.

INTERVIEWEE 4: Performed on 10/14/2020 at 9 AM via Microsoft Teams

Interviewee is a denials auditor within Revenue Cycle

    1. This user is quick with the emotions. During his interview you could tell he’s constantly searching for the quickest route and often doesn’t take the time to fully understand the solutions he’s returning.
    2. This user values turnaround speed to requests made.
    3. This user is primarily focused on denials reporting and other transaction analytics around hospital billing. 
    4. Like the other users, most solutions this user uses involves pulling standard reports out of our EMR and then using excel to collate the results into the format/depth that he is interested in. 
    5. Because the user is so focused on turnaround time he is often frustrated at how involved lining up some of these reports can be. 
    6. This user will seek help from the reporting manager of Revenue Cycle when he is stuck, but often times will seek the solutions on his own (and make assumptions along the way). 
    7. This user is keen to see a solution that marries different aspects of the denial data tree into one tool. Currently analyzing denials might involve collating data from 2-3 different sources which can be time consuming.

INTERVIEWEE 5: Performed on 10/15/2020 at 4 PM via Microsoft Teams

Interviewee is a director of nursing.

    1. The user is passionate about developing dashboards to help the nursing staff find inefficiencies that may exist in their workflows.
    2. This user values having data at their fingertips. 
    3. He is trying to build dashboards and other reports that can be used quickly by nursing and other staff to make assessments. 
    4. Currently he depends heavily on the EMR to provide the information he is needing for his staff, be it dashboards or floor reports. 
    5. Reports and dashboards aren’t always quick to pull up. New reports/dashboards can be slow to come on line from point of innovation to deployment.
    6. Typically if he runs into problems he speaks with the VP of the Emergency Department
    7. This user considers himself data savvy.

Analysis:

It should be noted that these interviewees were picked because of their interest in reporting as it pertains to their job. These users are considered data experienced users who have deep knowledge of their respective areas and personal experience building reporting solutions for others. Patterns I’ve observed:

    • These users want data at their fingertips, often going out of their way to pull necessary data. 
    • In an effort to quickly turn data around these users are not always focused on the accuracy of the data returned – only that it answers the question they posed. 
    • Data necessary for their job is not often in the same place and can take time to collect.

Reflection:

Ultimately these users need a one stop data shop. They need a tool to present them this data that limits the amount of time they have to spend collating different sources. These users really need a broad self-service reporting tool that allows them to do analysis quickly and turn reporting needs from inspiration to production.