Abstract
BACKGROUND: Dashboards are visual information systems frequently employed by healthcare organisations to track key quality improvement and patient safety performance metrics. The typical healthcare dashboard focuses on specific metrics, disease processes or units within a larger healthcare organisation. Here, we describe the development of a visual analytical solution (keystone dashboard) for monitoring an entire healthcare organisation. METHODS: The improvement team reviewed and assessed various data sources across the organisation and selected a group of patient and employee related metrics that afforded a broad overview of the organisation's well-being. Metrics spanned the organisation and included data from patient safety, quality improvement, human resources, risk management and medical staff affairs. Each metric was assigned a numeric weight that correlated with its impact. A visual model incorporating the various data fields was then constructed. RESULTS: The keystone dashboard incorporates a data heatmap and density visualisation to emphasis areas of higher density and/or weighted values. The heatmap is used to indicate the weight/magnitude of each metric within a data range in two dimensions: location and time. The visualisation 'heats up' depending on the combination of counts events and their assigned impact for the reporting month. Most data sources update in near real time. SUMMARY: The keystone dashboard serves as a comprehensive and collaborative integration of data from patient safety, quality improvement, human resources, risk management and medical staff affairs. This visual analytical solution incorporates and analyses metrics into a single view with the intent of providing valuable insight into the health of an entire organisation. This dashboard is unique as it provides a broad overview of a healthcare organisation by incorporating key metrics that span the organisation.