Philosophy
Our philosophy starts with our name; we deliver practical, best practice solutions. At our core, we put listening and education as our top priorities. We cultivate partnerships with our clients because we know that the business of healthcare is complex and turn-key analytics solutions rarely fill the needs of an organization.
Every custom solution we deliver is thoughtfully implemented and fine-tuned over time.
Our client success stories inspire us. Our approach encourages collaboration, iteration, and continual improvement and is what organizations can expect from our practical methodologies and best practice management techniques.
Our Founding
Practice Diagnostic Systems (PDS) is founded in 1995 by Stephan R. Brown. At the outset, PDS provides financial business intelligence solutions leveraging the Cognos platform to small healthcare practices located primarily in the Northeast.
Russell Hendrickson Joins PDS
Russell Hendrickson joins PDS at the start of 2000 as Vice President of Sales. His goal is to expand our analytics solutions suite and market to larger national health systems. The tagline Steve and Russell coin in the early days of PDS is still in use today; we are “Information Architects for Healthcare.”
Company Name Change
In 2007, Hendrickson takes over as managing partner and PDS expands its services to include dashboard visualizations and web-based technologies. To better reflect the range of solutions we provide to healthcare organizations, we change our name to “Practical Data Solutions.” The company continues to focus on delivering practical solutions that offer clients rapid implementations and a high return on investment.
Growth & Expansion
PDS specializes in delivering best practice “data marts” to facilitate the building and ongoing expansion of enterprise data warehouses accessible by our clients’ analytics platform of choice. In 2013, we develop our leading-edge analytics tool, “PDS iMPower,” featuring state-of-the-art web-based visualization technology. In 2019, PDS adds Tableau as another supported visualization and web-based technology.
Focus on Education
We believe that continual education is what brings real success to any endeavor and ongoing monthly training is a part of our standard support services. We love hosting conferences that bring together users of PDS tools for in-person educational workshops and collaborative round-table discussions. We also value employee education and keep our team ahead of the curve and up-to-date on the latest tools and technology innovations.
Today
As a leading-edge solution provider in the healthcare data analytics industry for over 20 years, we continue to proudly serve the analytical and reporting needs of hospitals and physician practices. Our solutions can be found in 30+ states, coast-to-coast. We serve large multi-hospital health systems, academic medical centers, and multi or single-specialty clinics and practices. And while organizations with 1,000, 5,000 or even 10,000 providers utilize our products and services, we also implement solutions for practices with 20, 50, or several hundred physicians.