Centro Hospitalar Psiquiátrico de Lisboa (Lisbon Psychiatric Hospital) implements SAS Visual Analytics to achieve fast, reliable and efficient data visualization and exploitation

Lisbon Psychiatric Hospital (CHPL), a facility that provides access to specialized psychiatric and mental healthcare for adults, has invested in the SAS Visual Analytics solution, with a view to achieving simple and segmented data visualization and exploitation. The move will bring clear benefits not only for mental healthcare but also internally with respect to patient care. Data aggregation and quality, more reliable information, the ability to cross-reference information, and the capacity to make forecasts are just a few of the benefits that the SAS tool has brought to the day-to-day operations of the CHPL, which currently employs a team of 95 doctors, not counting interns.

Lisbon Psychiatric Hospital

Lisbon Psychiatric Hospital (CHPL) was formed from the merger of two other hospitals: Miguel Bombarda and Júlio de Matos. Its mission is to ensure that the adult population in its direct and indirect sphere of influence has timely access to specialized psychiatric and mental healthcare provided by qualified multidisciplinary teams.

With the aim of ensuring a sustainable response to the needs of mentally ill adults throughout the course of their illnesses, the CHPL comprises a number of units that follow the policy guidelines for mental healthcare at the national and regional levels, as well as the strategic plans and decisions taken at a higher level.

After many decades of providing healthcare to an endless number of patients, huge amounts of data have been gathered; data relating not only to patients’ medical histories but also to the specific programs conducted by the CHPL, the development of local service networks and rehabilitation programs, and a series of other initiatives relating to personal and professional development, research, and more. All of this due to the extent of the facility’s sphere of influence. Consequently, and in light of the amount of data, it is vital that it should not be allowed to go to waste but, rather, that it be converted into useful and valuable knowledge.

With this in mind, the CHPL decided to implement SAS Visual Analytics, a software solution that combines analytics, reporting and visualization. The aim is to be able to analyze the information gathered and produced daily, which relates to many varied aspects of the facility’s internal and external activity.

The CHPL is under obligation to report certain details of its activity to the Ministry of Health, and SAS Visual Analytics will greatly facilitate this task due to its capacity to process any data, cross-reference and analyze the data processed, and generate the respective reports. Internal reporting is also a requirement, not only with regard to clinical matters but also to production, and here we are talking about the number of patients, the number and type of admissions, the number of consultations and the average length of each, costs, canceled appointments and many other aspects. And the CHPL’s Board of Directors now has access to this information, thanks to the SAS tool.

“We have a capacity of 400 beds but we also have other types of admissions and all this has to be managed. We are talking about approximately 870,000 patients. That is a lot of stored information so enabling the Board to access it quickly and efficiently was, in fact, essential,” explains Engineer Luís Salavisa, Head of IT at the CHPL.

Another important aspect is the fact that SAS Visual Analytics makes forecasting possible, which is useful and beneficial for mental healthcare and, once again, for the internal operations of the CHPL itself. “We are currently able to forecast what we will be doing in terms of consultations as far ahead as 2020. By the end of this year, our aim is to have a whole series of set indicators,” Luís Salavisa adds.

Indeed, although the SAS solution currently allows the visualization and exploitation of certain data, much still remains to be done. Internal reporting encompasses both the production and clinical sides of the facility’s operations and the latter applies not only to doctors but also to nurses. So the goal is for each group to be able to access the information that is most appropriate for them in a way which is beneficial and productive for both sides. Basically, the idea is to have a tool – with a simple, accessible and intuitive interface – that is patient-centered; a tool that collates a patient’s full medical history and will give access to the particular part of that history which is relevant to each specific healthcare professional, while always safeguarding patients’ privacy, given that the data is collected from various databases. And all this in a way that facilitates the jobs of the teams working at the CHPL and benefits the health and well-being of every patient.

“With regard to the benefits, I would have to say, first and foremost, the quality of the data… indeed, when the tool was first implemented, our percentage of useful data stood at only 33%; today it is 50%. Additionally, I should mention data aggregation, the cross-referencing that can be done with the information, reliability and the ability to access all the information quickly and efficiently,” concludes Engineer Luís Salavisa.