Executive and Operational Dashboards

The Situation

All hospitals compile daily and monthly operational statistics and performance measures to assess performance, even though the process of collecting and presenting this data is time-consuming, inefficient and lacks detailed analysis. These reports may provide a high-level snapshot of how the organization is performing, but decision makers are often frustrated by inability to quickly identify emerging patterns and pinpoint the root causes of identified problems. Executives often lack deep understanding of the underlying details of any given operational issue. This leads to broad and general improvement approaches, rather than the focused and specific action plans required to deliver performance improvements. Too often general performance improvement efforts result in wasted time, failed expectations, and ongoing fear of the next monthly report.

A sample dashboard showcases operational performance, including performance against targets and trends. Decision makers can easily spot problems and analyze underlying information to determine what’s affecting performance.

What is Needed Now?

In order to truly understand how the organization is performing, executives require meaningful information: key performance metrics (target and actual) delivered in a context that clearly communicates key issues, along with the ability to perform detailed analysis of issues and problem areas. Decision makers require executive and operational dashboards that can help them align and motivate teams to address performance issues and energize improvement efforts. This will drive efficiency, effectiveness and support organizational objectives. Growth, cost, and efficiency measures must be readily available alongside daily and monthly statistics in order to integrate strategic objectives with operational realities and conflicting issues. Collaborative efforts to align clinical practices with hospital departments, ancillary services, and leadership teams requires in depth knowledge of how the organization is performing in order to achieve operational excellence and obtain the best patient care outcomes.

The WhiteCloud Solution

WhiteCloud Executive and Operational Dashboards not only automate the process of generating up-to-date dashboards – but make two important enhancements. First they make sure it is the right metric, visualized in the right context, so that meaning and important takeaways are quickly understood. Second, they support the subsequent root cause analysis required to determine what is really causing performance issues. WhiteCloud solutions alleviate the labor intensive, tedious and often error-prone manual processes used by many hospitals today. Our solution empowers healthcare executives to do meaningful root cause analysis in seconds, not days, and eliminates the need to wait for an analyst to compile, aggregate, and format reports. Visibility to root causes and the drivers of poor performance illuminate the insights needed to enhance operational efficiency. Executives can then refine patient care delivery processes to consistently produce the best possible outcomes.

WhiteCloud solutions are designed to break down the barriers that prevent healthcare executives from obtaining the timely and meaningful information they need to better inform the decisions they make. WhiteCloud dashboard solutions integrate data from disparate operational systems, including clinical and financial systems, to enable decision makers to respond quickly to emerging trends and threats, and to sufficiently capitalize on opportunities.

The Result: Clear, Visible and Timely Insights

As a result, hospital executives and other key leaders have precisely the information they need at their fingertips when they need it – they are able to put meaningful, focused improvement plans in place and to measure performance against goals on an ongoing basis. “Time to cure” is significantly reduced as we accelerate the ability to see, understand, and address operational inefficiencies, growth issues, and other critical and necessary improvements. In addition, the WhiteCloud solution eliminates lag times associated with the operational reports and the manual processes required to produce them, which allows for more timely corrective action. Our solution provides hospital executives with the clear, visible and timely insights they need to continually monitor performance, increase organizational productivity, control costs and achieve operational excellence.

• Your decision making team is armed with key performance metrics, the ability to quickly identify and address potential issues, and the capability to drill deeply into underlying information to determine root causes.
• Layered dashboard content provides top-level overviews with the ability to drill down through specific details – which allows for immediate analysis and targeted correction.
• This means you can stop dreading the never-ending general and vague performance discussions. It is now possible to develop detailed and specific action plans to address the exact processes and responsible parties who are causing less than optimal performance.
• Executives have confidence that future monthly reports will actually show better performance.