Kaiser Permanente · Healthcare · Oakland, CA · 11 weeks
14 regional definitions of patient encounter unified in 11 weeks
Previous efforts failed because teams couldn’t agree on definitions. We approached the problem by focusing on governance before technology. We built a certified metric layer spanning 14 regions that maintained consistency without interrupting ongoing clinical reporting.
Challenge
Kaiser had 14 regional data teams, each tracking patient encounters differently. Finance, clinical operations, and compliance couldn’t agree on encounter counts for the same period. This mismatch caused $2.1 million in yearly reconciliation costs and stalled their AI readiness project. Two previous attempts to fix this internally had failed.
Outcome
The certified metric layer launched in week 11, cutting reconciliation costs from $2.1M a year to under $180K. We enabled the AI readiness initiative, which kicked off six weeks after delivery. Throughout the project, clinical reporting stayed fully operational without any interruptions.
Results
- $2.1M Annual reconciliation labor eliminated
- 11 wks Delivery, zero disruptions
- 14 Regions on a single metric definition
- $180K Residual annual governance cost
We tried to handle it ourselves twice and couldn’t get it done. Thinklytics stepped in, helped us reach an agreement in the first week, and wrapped up the project in eleven weeks. The quarterly reconciliation work we used to do is pretty much eliminated now.