Managing healthcare organizations is much like managing healthcare: Sound decisions require accurate knowledge of complex, interdependent variables. That's exactly what SAS solutions do for healthcare leaders – turn complex data into the business intelligence needed to produce the most successful outcomes.

Healthcare Providers

Healthcare providers manage massive quantities of data. Because it is scattered across various business units, labs and diagnostic departments, this data is rarely integrated. Hospitals and health systems use SAS to collect data from many different source systems, access cleansed data and view key metrics using the Web.We help our customers improve clinical outcomes, bolster the quality and safety of patient care and make the transition to evidence-based practices.

We have tailored our SAS Performance Management for Healthcare solution to meet the specific business intelligence needs of healthcare providers. This solution enables executives to view performance at an aggregate level while allowing clinicians to compare their individual performance to accepted benchmarks.

Hospital and health system executives and clinicians use SAS to:

• Align strategic priorities with departmental goals, objectives and measures;
• Determine the cause-and-effect relationship between measures, such as between length of stay and patient satisfaction;
• Forecast clinical service needs based on utilization rates and referral patterns;
• Achieve expense-reduction goals by arming clinicians with accurate and timely information;
• Pinpoint quality and safety issues by unit, service line and provider; and
• Reduce length of stay without compromising care.

Health Insurance

Health plans must manage the risk that premiums will be overwhelmed by claims. Historically, health insurers analyze membership, provider and claims data, but this analysis has been database-restricted, incapable of allowing more comprehensive analytics to cross these intelligence silos. Insurers need more if, for example, they are to control costs by predicting which individuals or providers will submit higher claims in the future. To engage in more forwardthinking analysis, our insurance customers use powerful predictive analytics to tackle a greater range of data: membership, enrollment, provider care delivery patterns and group demographics. We help health insurers create a unified platform to facilitate comprehensive forecasting, prediction and customer self-reporting.

With our assistance, SAS health plan customers:

• Determine which claims from healthcare providers are likely fraudulent;
• Enable pay-for-performance contract management for healthcare providers;
• Improve consumer-directed healthcare analytics and quantify quality metrics;
• Draw correlations between treatments, diagnoses and provider practices to deliver more effective disease management; and
• Perform outcomes analysis to support evidence-based medicine.

All SAS solutions for healthcare are built on the SAS Intelligence Platform, which provides a flexible foundation for delivering the information and intelligence your healthcare organization needs. As a gateway to all SAS functionality, this integrated architecture gives you quick access to consistent, high-quality information that supports improved processes and better decisions.

Why SAS?

SAS has served health and life sciences organizations for more than 29 years. In response to significant growth in this sector, SAS created its Health and Life Sciences Organization in 2003, dedicating substantial resources to serve these interconnected industries in a comprehensive manner – from sales and product development to consulting and customer service. We are a strategic partner to these organizations, supporting them in the important work they do to improve the health and lives of the people they serve.

SAS has recruited seasoned personnel from industry organizations – from both private and public sectors – to join its Health and Life Sciences Organization. This is a major reason for our success: Our people have worked in the field and know the current state of affairs in health and life sciences, as well as how the industry is evolving. Meet two of SAS’ most senior strategists whose prior experience as healthcare executives benefits the Health and Life Sciences Organization every day.

Melissa A. Fitzpatrick, RN, MSN, FAAN
Chief Healthcare Strategist (Provider)
At the 2005 HIMSS Annual Conference, Ms. Fitzpatrick presented “Creating an Evidence-Based Practice Culture with Business Intelligence.” Ms. Fitzpatrick joined SAS in November 2001. With 29 years of healthcare experience, she has held a variety of leadership roles: nurse manager, cardiovascular clinical nurse specialist, director of nursing, adjunct professor and health system vice president at Dartmouth- Hitchcock Medical Center. From 1997 to 1999, Ms. Fitzpatrick served as senior associate chief operating officer and the chief nurse executive at Duke University Hospital. She also served as the editor-in-chief of the Nursing Management Journal from 2000 to 2003.

Ms. Fitzpatrick brings extensive clinical and operational healthcare expertise, scorecard design and implementation expertise, and clinical standards and compliance expertise to SAS and our customers. She has played an integral role in every healthcare provider sale at SAS, contributing to the wins at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Yale New Haven Health System, Maine Medical Center, Duke University Hospital, Atlantic Health System and Centra Health.

Ms. Fitzpatrick earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing from Gwynedd-Mercy College and her master’s degree in nursing from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a nationally and internationally recognized consultant, speaker and author on clinical and leadership issues in healthcare, with many peer-reviewed publications and book chapters to her credit. Ms. Fitzpatrick is a past president of the Foundation for Critical Care and the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, the largest specialty nursing organization in the world. She was inducted as a fellow in the American Academy of Nursing in 1997, achieving the highest recognition in the profession of nursing. Ms. Fitzpatrick was selected as one of the Great 100 Nurses in North Carolina in 2002.

Richard B. Ingraham, Principal
Healthcare Strategist (Insurance)
Richard Ingraham brings a unique understanding of the shared business and delivery issues, along with conflicting incentive structures, within the healthcare provider, payer and IT analytic industries. He has served in various executive capacities across both private and public entities within each of these three key driver industries of healthcare improvement. His insight into the opportunities for improved collaboration and coordination across the healthcare spectrum serves as a foundation for SAS’ leadership within the health and life sciences arena. Ingraham represents SAS at major industry gatherings, including the Disease Management Association of America, America’s Health Insurance Plans, National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association and the National Managed Health Care Congress. Mr. Ingraham currently serves on the National Anti-Fraud Project Executive Committee for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, administered through the American Health Information Management Association.

After serving in various health delivery program management capacities within the Florida Department of Health & Rehabilitative Services, he became business director for the Leon County Public Health Department in Tallahassee, Fla., in 1984 before moving to manage an investigative unit with the Bureau of Allied Lines, Florida Department of Insurance in 1986.

Over the next 12 years, as director and vice president of operations, controller and chief financial officer for Equicor, CIGNA and the Health Services Group, respectively, Mr. Ingraham has directed numerous managed care program design and development initiatives, as well as strategic acquisition projects. His knowledge of claims patterns and analysis for fraud detection was formed through his Florida Department of Insurance and Equicor posts. He presents expertise in risk stratification for disease and medical case management, medical utilization improvements, provider performance and quality benchmarking, process engineering and internal control projects.

Since joining SAS in 1998, Mr. Ingraham’s efforts have focused on working with seniorlevel management teams in the healthcare sector to improve strategic decision-making processes and knowledge management, while aligning information technology capacities with business.