Getting Started with Your Patient Outcomes Dashboard

4-minute read

In the healthcare industry, the main focus will always be patient outcomes. Patients are first and foremost concerned about their health, and from a business perspective, positive outcomes allow you to maintain a competitive edge. So where should clinics be focusing their investments to improve patient experience? And how is employee behavior affecting it? There is currently little bridge between patient and employee experiences. To maintain a competitive edge in the market, organizations need to measure patient experience and discover ways to consistently improve.

To accomplish this, there needs to be a single view of metrics. A business dashboard is the optimal way to have a single source of truth, streamline communication, and display relevant information in real time. A dashboard will evolve with the needs of the stakeholders and users, as well as the availability and quality of the data.

Having a healthcare dashboard will serve as a tool to monitor and visualize organizational key performance indicators (KPIs) in a dynamic and interactive way. It will enable healthcare professionals to access important patient statistics, survey responses and other metrics. It can be used to increase overall hospital performance and patient satisfaction. By following the initial steps of the enterprise dashboard process, right up to the creation of the wireframes, you can create a healthcare dashboard that allows for actionable insight and behavioral change within your organization.

Start with Interviews

By utilizing the Enterprise Dashboard Process, you can ensure your dashboards bring value to the business and allow actionable insights for the users. The process consists of user & stakeholder interviews and design and data visualization best practices.

The initial step involves interviewing patients and measuring their experience across your facilities and staff. This will consist of creating a set of questions to ask, building a survey, and collecting the data. Make the set of questions broad in order to cover a wide range of key performance indicators (KPIs). Taking the time to assess your patients’ opinions and feelings will provide valuable insights and data to use within your dashboard. It will make them feel appreciated and listened to.

Create Personas

Next interview stakeholders and the users that will be utilizing the dashboard on a daily basis. This may include your CEO, CFO, or even a physician. It is important to have their input throughout the process because tailoring the dashboard to their needs will ensure adoption once it is live. This information will be used to create personas.

Gather information on the user’s key characteristics, including:

• Career Background

• KPIs that are most important to them

• Overarching goal (summed up in a quote)

Align the goals and objectives while communicating challenges and issues in this stage. By consolidating the information gathered from stakeholders and users, one can create a profile which will enable a better understanding of the individual goals.

Questions & Scenario Mapping

It’s time to ask questions and create the scenarios for which the user will need the healthcare dashboard. Building on the previous steps, identify the questions that the users need to have answered. These will relate directly back to the questions you asked in your survey and your KPI’s. For example, they can be questions surrounding patient satisfaction including “Did you feel your provider communicated effectively?”.

Tracking other metrics in addition to of patients’ feedback will also help you improve patient outcomes. By tracking things such as wait times or appointment times, you can discover flaws in your facility, set targets you would like to reach, and deliver more efficient care.

Once you think you are ready to go, make sure you have the storytelling aspect of your dashboard down. Utilize this sentence and plug in your information to get a comprehensive plan.

Once upon a time there was a PERSONA, one day SOMETHING HAPPENED, because of that SOME IMPACT, because of that OTHER IMPACT, until finally ACTION and RESOLUTION.

Wireframe the End Vision

Once all the data has been gathered and goals and KPIs have been developed, one can utilize the dashboard wireframe kit to create the wireframes. It will provide you with an easy to use layout; including filters, charts, and KPIs. This structure helps the team or user identify which charts are most relevant for the objectives they are trying to solve.

• Filters: Along the left side are the filters that the stakeholder is most interested in. This may include patient age, gender, or health habits. This can help you narrow your results to a targeted audience.

• KPIs: Along the top will be the KPI’s the stakeholder is most interested in. This can include a variety of things (depending on what you would like to improve) including hospital rating, provider rating, patient outcomes, and patient experience. The KPI’s will change color when an action is needed, therefore creating actionable insight.

• Charts: The center houses the charts, which creates an all-encompassing view of what is needed to improve on. Charts have titles in the form of questions, such as “Which providers are patient’s happiest with?” or “Is there a relationship between hospital and provider rating and patient outcomes?”. These charts will be developed in the previous step and feed on the survey data initially collected which when organized creates metrics for the dashboard. The chart’s will also change color when an action is needed.

Additionally, the user can create different tabs for each use case with various filters, metrics and charts. This will allow easy access to the information, and view what needs to be improved on.

Get Started

Healthcare dashboards have become an essential tool when it comes to improving outcomes and measuring ROI. Satisfied patients will return over and over again, and recommend the organization.

Head to Logic20/20’s website to view the full Dashboard Process from start to finish. Dashboard Wireframe Kits are available upon request as well as half day training sessions. At the half day session, you and your team will run through the process with an expert guiding you along the way. You will leave the session with dashboard best practices and wireframed dashboards.