In his white paper, John Mazza, Client Services Director, emphasizes the need for dashboards generated by BI systems to collect and integrate data from various sources within a hospital. He explains that dashboards should be capable of drilling down into KPI details to identify and address the root causes of performance issues.
To learn more about the author, hear his insights on this white paper, and learn what motivated him to write about this subject, click the video to the right.
If you would like to discuss this topic, please contact John using the information provided at the bottom of the white paper.
The disparate and disjointed data silos across various hospital departments constitute the biggest decision-making bottleneck. They impede the gathering of real-time, actionable information about the hospital’s financial key performance indicators (KPIs). Most hospitals have business intelligence (BI) systems, which provide post facto analysis and miss out on the real-time aspect. In such situations, the hospital executives depend on more than one system to get any actionable data and are thus stymied in taking effective, problem-solving steps.
Dashboards generated by the BI systems and used by hospital administrators need to gather data on KPIs from varied sources within the facility and present a holistic view. With such data aggregation, a COO can obtain a real-time, 360-degree snapshot of the hospital’s performance and make proactive decisions. At the same time, a dashboard must drill down into each of the KPI details to identify and eliminate the root causes of poor performance.
In this white paper, I present my point of view on crucial hospital financial KPIs, how a dashboard can accelerate the speed and quality of decision-making, and how it must present information.
Hospital executives must perform the complex task of keeping pace with the dynamic healthcare environment – constantly changing patient volumes, fluctuating supply costs, stringent government compliance and quality requirements, and staffing shortages. To make informed decisions that help the hospital maintain a comprehensive advantage, COOs need real-time, actionable information at their fingertips.
These disparate silos of data across various departments are the biggest bottleneck in providing actionable information. Mergers and acquisitions add to the diversity of hospital information system (HIS) application and data sources, thereby not allowing a true picture of a hospital’s performance. The need of the hour is to have an IT solution that can gather data from all disparate data sources and present it in an intuitive form to a COO, all in real time. In this paper, I will present my point of view on the information and features hospital COOs need to help them make informed decisions.
Hospital executives need to concentrate their energies on monitoring KPIs that are aligned with hospital goals. However, in this competitive environment, all hospitals have a common goal of providing quality care at a reasonable cost. The most common financial KPIs that should be looked at are:
| Type | Key KPI’s | Drill down KPI's | How does it help a COO |
|---|---|---|---|
| FINANCIAL These have a high impact on the top line and bottom line |
Payer performance | % Claims paid Reimbursements Amount Volume | Payer performance would provide insights into how payer contracts are performing, and which ones needs to be re-negotiated. |
| Physician Performance | Revenue per physician Reimbursements per physician | Physician performance provides insights into how each physician is performing in terms of the number of cases, revenue per case, and bonuses and penalties incurred per physician. | |
| Hospital Performance | Revenue profit margin clinical cost reimbursement AR aging days | This would provide a real time snapshot of the hospital’s performance in terms of revenue, profit, margin, reimbursement vs. utilization cost, AR by aging days, and potential high-risk AR that need immediate intervention. | |
| Referrals to Outside Centers | Division hours, Physician non-availability | Ambulance diversions have a very high impact on the clinical outcome and are a direct revenue loss to the hospital. Efforts should be made to keep this to a minimum. | |
| Expenses Incurred by Hospitals | Overtime hours, Test results error | Overtime hours provide an insight into capacity planning issues and have a direct impact on the bottom line as well as employee satisfaction. Test results errors result in lost revenues and resources, impacting the bottom line. Cause analysis needs to be carried out to reduce these occurrences. | |
| Physician Performance | Revenue per physician, Reimbursements per physician | Revenue and reimbursements per physician provide details on how each physician and specialty is performing. Bonuses and reimbursements provide an indirect measure of compliance with clinical pathways and hospital SOPs. |
The hospital’s business intelligence and reporting tool, which collects, cleans, and presents the data, must enable the following features:
1. The KPIs need to be represented by:
2. Trends must be highlighted whenever possible against:
3. A decision-support section must be available to:
4. All KPIs must have clear ownership and owner contact details. The drilldown reports/charts should be easy to e-mail and print.
5. Customized dashboard for quick access to information relevant to the specific user role.
6. Capability to access data feeds from other medical systems.
7. The tool needs to allow interoperability to enable corrective action by logging into the source system of KPI data.
8. Anytime, anywhere access by allowing users to access screens over mobile.
9. Rule engine to configure alerts, escalations, and decision support..
Today, visually intuitive, rich graphical dashboards can dramatically accelerate the speed and quality of the decision-making cycle. This is not just about making dashboards more pleasing to the eye but about users spending less time reviewing content and more time tracking action. A dashboard should be information-rich and not data-rich.
The key to effective performance monitoring is information-rich dashboards with real-time data from all disparate hospital applications, coupled with decision support, alerting, and escalating functionalities. With a clear definition and representation of KPIs, information dashboards empower COOs to actively make decisions that optimize across various objectives and look for creative ways to achieve goals.
