State of Minnesota

Department of Human Services

In keeping with Minnesota’s enterprise vision,
Bull Services BI data warehouse helps manage all medical assistance programs

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and State CIO Gopal Khanna have articulated a transformative vision for the state, one that will stress collaborative, enterprise-wide IT governance and shared services.   Such a goal will certainly aided by the Bull Services BI data warehouse that now forms the informational backbone for Minnesota’s medical assistance programs.

The Minnesota solution incorporates advanced analytics, data warehousing, and decision support capabilities.   It helps policy and operations staff from the Department of Human Services (DHS) manage a number of programs, including:

• Medical assistance
• General assistance medical care
• MinnesotaCare
• Home- and community-based waiver services
• Alternative health care program (helping older Minnesotans with home health services)
• Minnesota Senior Drug Program
• Minnesota Senior Health options

Since Minnesota ran its first query report just three months after it contracted with Bull Services – the fastest ‘award-to-first-query’ implementation of any BI data warehouse solution in public sector history – the BI solution has paid dividends for the North Star state. It has help DHS allocate resources more effectively, make decisions about the quality of care received around the state, and more quickly identify and manage fraud and abuse.

Moreover, the BI data warehouse solution has also helped DHS to become more proactive in its decision-making, helping the agency to set up “what-if” modeling for determining policy and making operational decisions. The warehouse enables DHS officials to quickly determine how many and what people would be affected by potential policy changes, for example, as well as establish maintenance priorities for the MMIS itself.

The solution has helped Minnesota save tens of millions, including more than $30 million in the last three years on federal high performance bonuses that analysts say would not have been possible without the data warehouse.

In addition, the warehouse has helped DHS be more responsive to the Legislature and to potential laws proposed in that body.

DHS has further visionary plans for the data warehouse; the enterprise approach to managing medical assistance programs is the first step in analyzing services offered to a person, rather than services offered by a program.

The Bull Services data warehouse, in short, is helping Minnesota DHS deliver medical welfare services differently and more effectively to the citizens who need them, allowing the agency to do things it could never do before. Working with Bull Services has helped DHS achieve its goals. "I can't say this enough," one DHS official said, "most vendors sell you what they are good at, not necessarily what you need. Bull Services provides us what we need."