Healthcare encounter snapshot

A hospital wants length-of-stay analytics and provider performance, attributed to the provider’s specialty and affiliation as they were at admission. An encounter moves through admission and discharge; provider attributes change over time.

This combines an accumulating snapshot (milestone timing) with Type 2 history (point-in-time provider context). Either alone gives wrong attribution or no timing.

• Create an encounter fact as an accumulating snapshot.
• Add admitted-at and discharged-at milestone columns and a grain key on the encounter id.
• Floor: make the provider dimension Type 2 with an effective-from and reference patient and provider by surrogate key.
• Grade up: bound each provider version with an effective-to so the admission-time window is explicit.