Summary
Healthcare provides a wealth of dimensional design examples. In this chapter, the enterprise data warehouse bus matrix illustrated the critical linkages between a healthcare organization’s administrative and clinical data. We used an accumulating snapshot grain fact table with role-playing date dimensions for the healthcare claim billing and payment pipeline. We also saw role playing used for the physician and payer dimensions in other fact tables of this chapter.
Healthcare schemas are littered with multivalued dimensions, especially the diagnosis dimension. Complex surgical events might also use multivalued bridge tables to represent the teams of involved physicians and other staff members. The bridge tables used with healthcare data seldom contain weighting factors, as discussed in earlier chapters, because it is extremely difficult to establish weighting business rules, beyond the designation of a “primary” relationship.
We discussed medical records and...