Epic dashboards. Enabling better decision-making.
Dashboards. It’s an old word we’ve transformed into business speak over the past few decades.
In the 1800s, dashboards shielded carriage drivers from mud and rocks the original horsepower kicked up. In the 1900s, the golden age of the automobile ushered in the second iteration of the word.
Today, we know dashboards as our quick reference for performance metrics.
Increased visibility.
Measurement has always driven our clinical and financial decision-making. We rely on evidence-based medicine, as well as solid financial data. But metrics haven’t always been easy to find.
Now, for the first time at Houston Methodist, executives can see clinical and financial data on the same dashboard. Combining these key indicators on a single screen is a big win. Executive dashboards also allow our leadership teams at each hospital to view metrics at all other Houston Methodist hospitals. These improvements provide high visibility into our overall performance as an organization.
Better executive decision-making.
“This new visibility saves time and enhances leadership decision-making,” said Ed Tyrrell, senior vice president for finance. “We can see clinical and financial information all on one screen. The fact that it’s in near real time helps substantially. The new consolidated view provides insight we’ve never had before.”
Before, seeing this information required logging in to multiple systems, like McKesson, MethOD, OR manager, MedHost and others to see what’s now displayed in one place.
Financial data.
Financial performance indicators include when we bill patients, when they pay their bills, when we charge the insurance company and when we receive that money. Better visibility into revenue generation lets us do a better job of managing our finances. The dashboards reveal anything that may be holding up billing patients and insurance companies. And that improves our bottom line.
Clinical metrics.
Medication administered on time? Vital signs recorded? How many patients in restraints? These are some of the performance metrics available for all nurses. At a glance, nurse managers — and every nurse — can see how each patient is doing via dashboards.
Physician dashboards can track when routine assessments like tobacco screening and BMI follow-up for obese patients are conducted. For office managers, dashboards even help with patient scheduling by displaying patient appointment cancellation rates.
An ER dashboard shows in one place how many patients are in the Emergency Department, have been seen by a physician and need to be admitted. The dashboards also include performance metrics like how long patients waited to see their doctors and how long they stayed in the ED.
The OR dashboard displays how many patients are in the cath lab, recovery, preop, surgery and postop.
With Epic, we’re just getting our hands on this dashboard technology. We’ll continue exploring our data mining capabilities for even better decision-making in the future.
