Improving Health Care Management in Hospitals Through a Productivity Dashboard

J Med Syst. 2020 Mar 12;44(4):87. doi: 10.1007/s10916-020-01546-1.

Abstract

Health information systems have been developed to help hospital managers steer daily operations, including key performance indicators (KPIs) for monitoring on a time-aggregated basis. Yet, current literature lacks in proposals of productivity dashboards to assist hospitals stakeholders. This research focuses on two related problems: (1) hospital organizations need access to productivity information to improve access to services; and (2) managers need productivity information to optimize resource allocation. This research consists in the development of dashboards to monitor information obtained from a hospital organization to support decision makers. To develop and evaluate the productivity dashboard, the Design Science Research (DSR) methodology was adopted. The dashboard was evaluated by stakeholders of a large Portuguese hospital who contributed to iteratively improving its design toward a useful decision support tool. Additionally, it was ascertained that monitoring productivity needs more study and that the dashboards on these themes are valuable assets at a monitoring level and subsequent decision-making process.

Keywords: Business intelligence; Dashboard; Health information systems; Hospital management; KPI.

MeSH terms

  • Benchmarking*
  • Decision Support Systems, Management
  • Delivery of Health Care
  • Efficiency, Organizational*
  • Health Information Systems*
  • Hospital Administration