Dashboards and Data: Supporting Strategy through Transparency of Metrics

The Triple Aim was developed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and encompasses three aims in improving healthcare performance: 1) improving the patient experience of care, 2) the health of populations, and 3) reducing the per capita cost of healthcare (IHI, 2014).

Nursing performance metrics are often static and provided in summary reports monthly or quarterly. Analysis of these metrics is ‘after the fact’ and offers no pro-active opportunities. Using an innovative graphical software program, Tableau, a dynamic nursing quality dashboard was created with real-time metrics, end-of-month, end-of-quarter, and nationally benchmarked metrics. The nursing dashboard contains performance metrics important to the operations of a nursing unit, including quality and safety, finance, and personnel indicators.

The nursing quality dashboards are posted on the internal Intranet site for easy access. The dashboard has a dynamic table of contents for each unit where the nursing staff and leaders can navigate through all available performance metrics. It is possible to drill-down on performance metrics by type (i.e. pressure ulcers, infections, nurse satisfaction, patient satisfaction), date and in some cases, cause of the issue. Both process measures and outcomes measures are provided for quality improvement initiatives.

The individual preventable harm work teams utilize the dashboards for analysis of compliance with standard patient care, as well as the outcome of their improvement efforts. Nursing leaders utilize the real-time information to adjust resources to support the patient experience, the continuum of care and positive patient outcomes. Nursing leaders have the opportunity to use the performance metrics throughout the month to understand both process and outcomes metrics for priority initiatives. Balancing the quality and safety outcomes with financial targets enables a triple aim perspective of nursing practice. This perspective is essential for elevating the role of the nursing leaders by providing them with unit, service-line, or organizational metrics in an easy-to-view manner, critical for successful analytics and action planning. Examples will be provided of utilization of the nursing dashboard and data driven decision-making.