Swedish Medical Center Improves Care with Tableau...Which is Pretty Good Timing for Me

Just last week, I was a patient at the Swedish hospital First Hill campus. Swedish Medical Center has been “my” healthcare provider since I moved to Seattle. Swedish doctors have kept me and my family healthy for almost 20 years now. While I was sitting in the waiting room, I actually thought about the recent interview I had with David Delafield, CFO of Swedish Medical Group, and what he had to say about how the hospitals and medical groups across Swedish are using Tableau as its Enterprise BI platform. (No, seriously, I really did.)

Just last week, I was a patient at the Swedish hospital First Hill campus. Swedish Medical Center has been “my” healthcare provider since I moved to Seattle. Swedish doctors have kept me and my family healthy for almost 20 years now.

While I was sitting in the waiting room, I actually thought about the recent interview I had with David Delafield, CFO of Swedish Medical Group, and what he had to say about how the hospitals and medical groups across Swedish are using Tableau as its Enterprise BI platform. (No, seriously, I really did.)

Hearing David talk about the incredible changes that Swedish has been able to implement was inspiring. After all, the numbers are incredible:

  • Tens of millions of dollars (annually) in improved operational processes
  • $750,000/year in new analyst costs avoided or re-directed
  • $600,000 in savings by eliminating two analytics platforms that existed in silos
  • But that wasn’t really what stayed on my mind as I waited for my name to be called. I mostly thought about what David had to say about how Swedish is improving the care it can provide through improved insight.
    If you’ve been following healthcare reform at all, you probably know that understanding and meeting healthcare quality metrics is an absolute imperative in the industry.

    And if you’re sitting in a waiting room at a hospital, knowing you’re about to be knocked unconscious… well, your hospital’s ability to understand and improve its care quality pretty much becomes the most important thing there is. Trust me on that.

    It was reassuring to think about how Swedish is using Tableau to understand and improve metrics on everything from hospital readmission rates to individual patient satisfaction with care—and more. And this is just the beginning for the Tableau/Swedish relationship.

    “Eventually, we hope this platform will help us improve not only our internal performance but potentially change the way that we interact with our customers, the patients,” David said during our meeting.

    To learn more about how Swedish is using Tableau, read the case study.

    And hey—Swedish Medical Center peeps—if you’re reading this: