Use Microsoft Copilot in Excel to Analyze UR Case Metrics

What This Does

Microsoft Copilot in Excel can analyze your UR department's case review data (pulling from a spreadsheet you export from your UM platform) and automatically generate charts, identify denial rate trends by diagnosis, and surface patterns that would take hours of manual pivot table work. This turns your weekly or monthly case data into a readable report in minutes.

Before You Start

• You have Microsoft Excel open (desktop app or web at office.com)
• You have a Microsoft 365 subscription with Copilot enabled
• You have case data exported from your UM platform (CSV or Excel format). Minimum columns needed: date, diagnosis, decision (approved/denied), level of care, reviewer

Steps

1. Open your case data in Excel and enable Copilot

Open your exported case data in Excel. Look for the Copilot button in the Home tab. Click it to open the Copilot pane on the right side.

What you should see: Your data in a spreadsheet, Copilot pane open on the right.

2. Format your data as a table

Before asking Copilot to analyze, make sure your data is formatted as an Excel Table. Select your data range, then press Ctrl+T (or go to Insert → Table). Check "My table has headers" and click OK. This lets Copilot understand your data structure.

What you should see: Your data now has alternating colored rows and filter dropdowns in the header row.

3. Ask Copilot for a denial rate breakdown

In the Copilot pane, type: "Create a chart showing denial rates by diagnosis category for the past 30 days. Highlight any categories with denial rates above 20%."

What you should see: Copilot generates a chart and may add a new sheet with a summary pivot table.

Troubleshooting: If Copilot says it can't identify the data, check that your column headers are clear (e.g., "Decision" not "Dec" or column E). You can tell Copilot "The decision column is column D with values 'Approved' or 'Denied'."

4. Ask for productivity metrics

Type: "Calculate average cases reviewed per reviewer per day. Show me which reviewers are above and below the team average."

What you should see: A new table or chart comparing reviewer productivity.

5. Generate a summary for your manager report

Type: "Write a 5-bullet summary of this month's UR case data: total cases, approval rate, denial rate, top 3 denied diagnosis categories, and any notable trends."

What you should see: A ready-to-copy text summary for your management report or team meeting.

Real Example

Scenario: End of month. You need to report UR metrics to the quality team but the UM platform exports a raw 500-row spreadsheet that's hard to read.

What you do: Export the data to Excel, format as a Table, open Copilot. Type: "Analyze this case review data. Create a summary showing: total cases reviewed, approval vs. denial breakdown, top 5 diagnoses by volume, and denial rate trend week-over-week."

What you get: A structured analysis with automatically generated charts, ready to paste into a PowerPoint or share as a PDF for the quality meeting.

Tips

• Export your UM platform data regularly (weekly) and keep a running Excel file. Copilot gets more useful as the dataset grows over time
• If you don't have Copilot, the same analysis can be done with Excel's built-in PivotTable feature. It just takes more manual steps
• Ask Copilot to "format this data as a table ready to paste into a PowerPoint slide" to get a clean output for reporting

Tool interfaces change. If a button has moved, look for similar AI/magic/smart options in the same menu area.