Suppose you needed to make sense of data. You were faced with either multiple sheets of numbers and text or one page of collated graphs and charts representing the data. Which would you choose? If you are a visual learner, you may prefer the latter.

Because they are visually appealing and contained, dashboards can provide a quick snapshot of key quality measures. Recalling our previous example of patient falls, with a dashboard a nurse executive would be able to organize the falls by patient condition and time of day. The visual display would help the nurse executive trace any trends and consider relationships between the identified factors, thus advancing her organization’s commitment to safety and the Triple Aim/Quadruple Aim.

Now that you have selected, justified, and refined your quality measures from last week, this week you can consider how to display them in a dashboard. This week, you will do so as part of your Module 2 Assignment. 

Learning Objectives

Students will:

• Evaluate priority areas for healthcare quality measurement
• Analyze the influence of the Triple Aim/Quadruple Aim for prioritization of measures
• Create a quality dashboard
• Justify choice of visual display
• Recommend strategies for communicating dashboard data in healthcare organizations

References:

Parkland Health and Hospital System. (2019). Quality of care dashboard—Summary indicators. Retrieved from https://www.parklandhospital.com/summary-indicators

Lowder, D. (2016, October 20). Healthcare dashboards vs. scorecards: Use both to improve outcomes. Retrieved from https://www.healthcatalyst.com/healthcare-dashboards-vs-scorecards-to-improve-outcomes

Denham, C. R. (2006). Leaders need dashboards, dashboards need leaders. Journal of Patient Safety, 2(1), 45–53.

Kroch, E., Vaughn, T., Koepke, M., Roman, S., Foster, D., Sinha, S., & Levey, S. (2006). Hospital boards and quality dashboards. Journal of Patient Safety, 2(1), 10–19.

Parr, J. M., Bell, J., & Koziol-McLain, J. (2018). Evaluating fundamentals of care: The development of a unit‐level quality measurement and improvement programme. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 27(11–12), 2360–2372.

Weggelaar-Jansen, A. M. J. W. M., Broekharst, D. S. E., & de Bruijne, M. (2018). Developing a hospital-wide quality and safety dashboard: A qualitative research study. BMJ Quality & Safety, 27(12), 1000–1007. Retrieved from https://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/27/12/1000

Assignment: Quality Dashboard

When you think of a story, what does it include? A beginning, a middle, and an end. A conflict or problem, and a resolution. Dashboards are not only helpful for monitoring the current quality and safety climate but also for evaluating where problems have arisen. In other words, the best dashboards tell a story through visual representations of data. The nurse executive serves as a main character in that story, determining what actions to take to resolve quality issues based on the information coming in.

For this Assignment, you will create a quality dashboard for Community General Hospital, justify your presentation of the measures, and leverage the dashboard as a leadership tool. What is the story you want to tell? And how do you want to tell it?

To Prepare:

• Review the Community General Hospital Case Study presented in the Learning Resources.
• Explore this week’s Resources about the use of dashboards for leadership and quality improvement.
• Review any feedback received in the Week 7 Discussion about your chosen measures for Community General Hospital.
• Determine how you will display the measures in your dashboard.

 Assignment 

Part 1: Dashboard
Using Microsoft Excel or PowerPoint, create a quality dashboard based on the Community General Hospital Case Study. Your dashboard must include 6–8 measures. Use mock data to represent the measures you have chosen. 

Part 2: Written Summary
To accompany your dashboard, write a 2- to 3-page paper in which you do the following:

• Identify the 6–8 quality measures you have chosen for your dashboard.
• Explain why these measures are important to the organization.
• Analyze how the Triple Aim/Quadruple Aim is represented in your chosen measures.
• Explain how you displayed the measures. Justify your choice of display.
• Provide a strategy for communicating the dashboard throughout the organization.
• Explain how the dashboard could be used as a leadership tool to improve patient outcomes.