ACC CV SUMMIT: Dashboards - How to Value Them and How to Create Them

Friday, January 17, 2014 | MedAxiom

Dr. Blair Erb, Jr., Bozeman Deaconess Cardiology Consultants and ACC Trustee, opened the presentation by quoting Lord Kelvin from 1883 saying, “If you can not measure it, you cannot improve it.” He continues by sharing a classic balanced scorecard to identify where dashboards fall in this traditional business process and shares how this relates directly to a cardiology program.

Dr. Erb believes that great strides in performance improvement will require standardize care created by physicians. These standards of care and improvements in consistency will be a result monitoring performance through tools like dashboards. Organizations must select on an agreeable set of metrics to use to measure and follow.

Suzette Jaskie, President & CEO for MedAxiom Consulting, says dashboards are tactical and operational in nature and they are comprised of discreet data elements frequently observed by management. The best dashboards support Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) or strategic objectives and must reflect variability or trends.

Ms. Jaskie defines dashboards as graphically simple displays of critical metrics whose values provide a snapshot of current status and guide performance. She says characteristics of a useful dashboard include:

• Metrics are clearly defined
• Goals are clearly defined
• External benchmark is included
• Internal performance trends are included
• Visually appealing and easy to read

Organizations can create effective dashboards by defining the scope or intention of utilizing the dashboard, identifying the audience, articulating the priorities across the organization or program, develop clear goals and objectives, than finally test your measurement, make adjusts and monitor progress.

As the floor was opened for questions, attendees asked where they could get simple dashboards to use for their programs. Both Ms. Jaskie and Dr. Erb agreed there are few standard dashboards and certainly not ones that provide all of the metrics that an organization needs or would want to include to be effective. They feel that dashboards should be custom to meet the needs of the organization.

What dashboards do you use?