Questions about hospital dashboards and KPIs

A hospital dashboard reads data from the information system at set times, applies calculation rules to each indicator and shows the result on a screen with filters, the variance against a reference and the ability to drill from the total to the detail. See hospital dashboard.

A few, always with a reference: revenue, contribution margin, EBITDA and net result; denial rate, unbilled accounts and average collection period; occupancy rate, average length of stay and volume against last year. The annotated list is in hospital KPIs and in the article 15 essential KPIs.

Occupancy rate = patient-days ÷ operational bed-days × 100, for the period. It should be read by unit (ICU, medical, surgical), because the hospital average hides differences. See the article on occupancy rate.

Average length of stay = patient-days ÷ discharges in the period, counting discharges, deaths and external transfers. It should be compared by department, specialty and payer. See the article on average length of stay.

It depends on the topic: billing and unbilled accounts call for several refreshes a day; volume, daily; accounting, after month-end close. More important than "real time" is knowing the time of the last update, which Clic Health shows on every dashboard.

Enough to answer one question. The board's first screen works well with eight to twelve KPIs, always with the comparison. More than that on one screen tends to hide what matters; detail belongs on specific dashboards.