Best Practices

A roadmap for creating, perfecting dashboard reports

They are a valuable decision-making tool, but fine-tuning is required.

By Andrew Maller, MBA, COE

I recently worked with a client who had just created dashboard reports to track physician productivity metrics among several sites. To create the reports, the practice administrator conducted multiple meetings with the department managers, ultimately developing a top-10 list of metrics the administrator felt were most important to the partners. The partners, who asked the administrator to improve the regular reports they had been using for years, approved the identified metrics and the plan to update the reports. The purpose of the new dashboards was to provide the doctors with a better snapshot of their performance and possibly identify ways to increase patient flow.

As with many projects, initial enthusiasm was high. The partners were impressed by the quality and formatting of the report. After a few months, however, enthusiasm started to wane. Data gathering and tracking proved to be time-intensive, taking at least 10 hours each month to complete the report.

In addition, some metrics did not seem to provide much significant insight, especially for the amount of time they took to compile. As other important projects surfaced, the monthly reports began to fall by the wayside. At some point, management saw no tangible improvements (i.e., physician productivity and patient flow) since they initiated the dashboard. Within a relatively short period, a project that seemed destined for success was viewed as a failure.

It didn’t have to end that way.

DASHBOARD DO’S

A dashboard generates a brief, easily interpreted report that combines key performance indicators (KPIs) that together, create a snapshot showing an organization’s health at any moment. The KPI results should inspire communication regarding specific practice challenges and stimulate discussion about what actions should be taken for improvement. But, often enough those inspirations and actions never appear: practices new to the dashboard struggle like the one I just described.

So, how can practices overcome initial challenges and turn their dashboard reports into useful tools to improve performance? By considering the following, proven best practices:

Involve stakeholders. Like any key project, the right team members must be at the table from the beginning to ensure the initiative’s long-term success. An initial misstep my clients made was not including key stakeholders — the physician owners — in determining what data to track. We recommend having at least one physician involved in the planning process.

That said, you’ll need a leader, even with the right team members in place. I usually recommend the practice administrator lead the initiative.

Be brief but meaningful. The most effective dashboards are typically one page in length, involve only critical measurements to the health practice and can be easily understood. One common pitfall that practices fall into with dashboard reporting is that they track too many metrics. While there are seemingly countless measures that can be tracked, stakeholders needn’t identify more than five to seven areas, depending on the purpose of the report. One reason my client’s staff members struggled was because they were tracking 10 metrics — if you use a dashboard, you know how much time it took them to complete the report. But, it is important to choose metrics that are meaningful and easy to interpret: these include revenue trends, patient visits per day and key procedure trends.

Be consistent and timely. Keeping a consistent schedule garners confidence from the partners and provides accountability for team members. The dashboard should be completed around the same time each month. For example, if tracking items from the profit and loss statement, consider setting a goal of the 15th to enter the previous month’s results. Then have a regularly scheduled meeting with the partners and work team to present the results.

Meet regularly. To reiterate, the stakeholders should meet consistently to review the dashboard. The current period results should be compared to a previous time period (previous month, quarterly, prior year-to-date), industry benchmark, or established goal (for example, a specific doctor seeing more than 40 patients in a day). This level of comparison allows for the evaluation of how current programs or initiatives are doing within the context of the dashboard results. Use the results and corresponding conversation to identify potential issues and to set goals for performance improvement.

Set goals. When reviewing the reports with the stakeholders, it is critical to set realistic goals to achieve performance improvement. Goals should be measurable, attainable and achievable within a specific period of time. For example, one goal would be to increase new patient visits, over the total practice, by 15% over the prior quarter. Setting goals does not guarantee success, however. The next step in the process is to determine specific action items (for example, conduct a schedule template-review or technician time study) that will help the practice reach those goals.

Track progress. During the regular update meetings, the dashboard should illustrate what progress has been made based on the previously established goals and action items. Assuming the practice has achieved its goals, use this as an opportunity to set new objectives. If a goal has not been reached, re-examine the situation to determine if there are other potential issues.

A WORTHWHILE PROCESS

A prime realization that practices experience with dashboard reporting is that setting up the report is only a small part of a complex process. For practices that wish to succeed with dashboard reports, consider following the tips in this article. While challenges will surely turn up along the way, you will find that being consistent and having a long-term, goal-oriented focus will elevate dashboard reporting to a vital business decision-making tool. OM

Andrew Maller is a principal and consultant with BSM Consulting, an internationally recognized health-care consulting firm headquartered in Incline Village, Nev. and Scottsdale, Ariz. For more information about the author, BSM Consulting, or content/resources discussed in this article, please visit www.BSMconsulting.com.