NURS 6211: Finance and Economics in Health Care Delivery | Week 7

You have just been informed that the administrative offices at the university have proposed eliminating your clinic to reduce costs and instead are considering outsourcing student health services to a local urgent care center. You feel this is a huge mistake and would negatively impact students’ ability to access health care. In order to convince those in the administration to keep your clinic running, you must make a compelling case as to your high level of performance. What types of information would you use to make your case? Effective organizations track key performance indicators to monitor progress. What key indicators would demonstrate the success of your clinic?

This week you examine performance reports and how they can be used in financial decision making.

 

Learning Objectives – NURS 6211:Week 7: Performance Measurements and Dashboards Paper

Students will:

• Assess performance based on performance reports
• Analyze performance indicators in health care organizations
• Evaluate the types of information to include in financial dashboards

Learning Resources

Note: To access this Week’s required library resources, please click on the link to the Course Readings List, found in the Course Materials section of your Syllabus.

Required Readings

Baker, J. J., Baker, R. W., & Dworkin, N. R.  (2018). Health care finance: Basic tools for nonfinancial managers (5th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett Learning.

• Chapter 12, “Financial and Operating Ratios as Performance Measures” (pp. 127-134)This chapter introduces a number of different tools that can be used to measure the performance of an organization. These include liquidity ratios, solvency ratios, and profitability ratios.

Kleinpell, R. M. (2009). Analyzing economic outcomes in advanced practice learning. In Outcome assessment in advanced practice nursing (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company.

This chapter outlines five different types of economic outcomes that can be used by advanced practice nurses for assessing costs and determining performance benefits within a health care organization.

Serb, C. (2011). Effective dashboards: What to measure and how to show it. Hospitals & Health Networks, 85(6), 40.

In this article, the authors discuss automated systems known as executive dashboards, which are designed to highlight key data. Additionally, the article describes the components most experts agree should be included on an executive dashboard.

Nash, M., Pestrue, J., Geier, P., Sharp, K., Helder, A., & McAlearney, A. (2010). Leveraging information technology to drive improvement in patient satisfaction. Journal for Healthcare Quality: Promoting Excellence in Health care, 32(5), 30–40.

This article explores how senior leaders can facilitate improvement in patient experience and satisfaction by strategic improvement and setting goals. This article presents a case detailing how the Ohio State University Medical Center (OSUMC) used information technology to formulate a strategy to improve patient experience.

Barta, A. (2010). Dashboards: A required business management tool. Biomedical Instrumentation & Technology, 44(3), 228–30.

This article describes how dashboards became an integral financial and management tool for Trinity Health Clinical Engineering when it centralized the clinical engineering functions of five hospitals.

National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators. (2014). National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators. Retrieved from NDNQI :http://www.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/ANAMarketplace/ANAPeriodicals/OJIN/TableofContents/Volume122007/No3Sept07/NursingQualityIndicators.html

This website is a repository for nursing quality indicators.

Wadsworth, T., Graves, B., Glass, S., Harrison, A., Donovan, C., & Proctor, A. (2009). Using business intelligence to improve performance. Healthcare Financial Management, 63(10), 68–72.

In this article, the authors describe a case study involving the Cleveland Clinic Foundation’s management supervision and how they kept track of its key performance indicators (KPIs) to aid in reducing operational costs and improving quality of care.

Required Media

Laureate Education (Producer). (2012). Dashboards. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Note: The approximate length of this media piece is 6 minutes.

In this video, William Ward discusses the use of dashboards as a tool for tracking organizational performance. He compares different types of dashboards and describes how to select the most relevant data to include on a dashboard.

Discussion: Performance Reports/Dashboards

Performance reports are a valuable tool for gauging the financial well-being and progress of a health care organization. When properly designed, these reports can provide data on key measures, quality indicators, performance of operations, patient satisfaction, personnel, and facility capacity.

Have you ever seen the cockpit of an airplane? The dashboard is covered with a variety of knobs and gauges. Having a pilot who understands the meaning of the data contained on the dashboard is essential for passenger safety and for reaching the correct destination in a timely fashion. Similarly, a dashboard for your organization can supply a wide variety of performance information to assist in the financial decision making process.

In this Discussion, you will describe a dashboard that would be useful for you in your current position and organization (or one with which you are familiar).

To prepare:

• Review this week’s Media program, Dashboards.
• Consider your own organization (or one with which you are familiar) and the key information that would be useful for decision making.
• Develop a list of key performance indicators in the following categories that would be useful for your situation. Include:
  • 2–3 financial indicators
  • 2–3 operational indicators
  • 2–3 satisfaction indicators
  • 2–3 quality indicators

By Day 3

Post describe the specific indicators you selected for each category and explain why you chose those particular ones. Describe whether each indicator is a leading or trailing indicator and how this particular combination would provide the best overall view of the state of your organization. Assess how having a dashboard such as this would assist in decision making.

Note: You do not have to actually create the dashboard, but just describe the indicators you would include.

Read a selection of your colleagues’ responses.

By Day 6

Respond to at least two of your colleagues on two different days using one or more of the following approaches:

• Ask a probing question, substantiated with additional background information, evidence or research.
• Share an insight from having read your colleagues’ postings, synthesizing the information to provide new perspectives.
• Expand on your colleagues’ postings by providing additional insights or contrasting perspectives based on readings and evidence. NURS 6211:Week 7: Performance Measurements and Dashboards Paper

 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION 

Analyzing performance indicators in health care organizations

Introduction

Health care organizations have always been unique in the way they operate and measure results. In the past, they relied on traditional methods of quality improvement such as quality audits and external reviews. But today’s healthcare environment is different—and it requires a different approach to managing performance. That’s why Accenture created our new analytics-driven insights for this industry: we know how important it is for health care organizations to track progress toward achieving goals and communicating results so that people can make informed decisions about their own health care needs.

What are KPIs?

KPIs are a set of metrics that measure the performance of a business process or function. For example, if you’re running a marathon and want to know how fast your time is going, you might track the distance traveled and the pace at which you were moving during each mile or kilometer. You can also use this data to calculate an overall average pace for each mile—the total number of miles divided by how long it took to cover those miles (in this case, 24 minutes).

If your goal was simply to see how fast we could make our way through one particular race course in any given season then we would have no need for these measurements; however, if we wanted more accurate information about our progress over time (e.g., did I improve my times between seasons?) then adding these extra metrics would allow us do so with greater accuracy than just tracking distance alone could provide.”

Why use KPIs?

KPIs are a common tool used to measure performance. They help you identify areas of improvement, opportunity and risk in your health care organization.

KPI’s can be used across all levels of an organization: from top management down through the departmental level; from clinical teams to support staff; from operating room floors to billing departments.

They also provide a way for everyone involved with the care of patients or clients at any level within our organization (including physicians) to have access at any time during their work day/weekends because they are always accessible 24/7!

KPIs help communicate goals and objectives.

KPIs help communicate goals and objectives.

KPIs can be used to communicate progress toward goals, which is key when you want your organization’s performance to be consistent with its mission statement. The term “KPI” stands for key performance indicator, and it refers to any measure that captures information about an organization’s success. Some examples of KPIs include employee turnover rates and patient satisfaction scores. These types of measures provide useful information that can help management focus on the right things at work—and make decisions based on what matters most in order to improve patient care outcomes

KPIs can help highlight problems and opportunities.

KPIs can help you identify problems and opportunities.

KPIs are a great way to see the big picture, which is especially important when it comes to health care organizations. If you’re working in an industry that doesn’t have many KPIs, it’s easy for leaders to get lost in their daily work and forget about how their actions impact patient outcomes or employee satisfaction. KPIs give you a way of measuring progress toward achieving these goals so that they become tangible metrics for review by management every quarter or year. They also provide an opportunity for self-reflection on what works best within your organization (and why), which can help guide future decisions on strategy development as well as budget allocation during annual budgeting cycles

Using performance indicators to drive quality improvement

To drive quality improvement, you need to have a clear understanding of what the right KPIs are. You also need to know how and when they should be used. The following example shows how KPIs can help drive quality improvement in health care organizations:

• A hospital has been using an annual survey of its patients as one of its key indicators for measuring performance. It wants this survey to include questions on how satisfied patients are with their care experience, but it’s not sure how well each question measures quality of care provided by the hospital staff or whether any two questions really measure similar things (e.g., “How likely would you recommend this service provider again?” might not be very useful if asking about satisfaction with wait times). To address these concerns, the team decided on using a combination of multiple questions that ask about both clinical aspects (e.g., did they receive timely tests results?) and customer service aspects (e.g., did they feel listened-to?). This way both aspects could be measured independently—and they could also look at trends over time rather than just comparing individual responses today against yesterday’s answers (which might lead us down bad paths).

Selecting KPIs for your health care organization

• Choose KPIs that are relevant to your business

• Use KPI measures to measure the impact of changes in your organization. For example, if you’re looking at how much revenue is generated by each product or service line, it’s important to consider the cost per unit and the number of units sold.

• Measure effectiveness with KPI metrics. You can also use these metrics as a way for employees or managers at all levels within an organization (or even outside) to see which areas need improvement before making any changes—and then make those improvements!

How Accenture helps health organizations achieve success in the new reality with analytics-driven insights

To help you achieve success in the new reality, Accenture is a trusted partner.

In this article, we will look at how analytics-driven insights can help you identify and prioritize your most important business priorities.

Having a clear set of goals and metrics is an important step toward achieving quality improvement.

Having a clear set of goals and metrics is an important step toward achieving quality improvement. KPIs are used to measure performance, whether you’re managing a health care organization or charting your own path toward better patient outcomes.

You can use KPIs to:

• Identify problems and opportunities

• Communicate goals and objectives

• Drive quality improvement

Conclusion

As you can see, KPIs are a powerful tool for health care organizations to use in their journey toward quality improvement. They help make it clear what your goals are and how much progress has been made toward achieving them. And because they’re based on measurable data, KPIs provide clear feedback on the status of your program—so that you can make adjustments as needed without having to guess or speculate about what might be going wrong.