A wise Corporate Strategy professor at MIT said “Strategy without numbers is poetry and organizations are not in the business of writing poems”
Most executives and managers in different industries use dashboards to monitor their top areas of interest a well as keep track of industry news and trends. As Peter Drucker stated “If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Improve It. ”
In healthcare, patient monitors have been around for years. Patients are monitored for their vitals signs and the data is also available at the nurses station. However dashboards that have hospital data or individualized data based on function are now coming of age.
A C-Suite executive at a hospital should have a customized dashboard to monitor Quality, Financial metrics, Re-admission rates and Patients Satisfaction for the hospital on a daily basis rather than wait for the monthly or annual report from the particular department. The dashboard would have not only descriptive analytics, but also predictive and prescriptive ones providing insights and plans.

Why should the doctor not have a customizable dashboard to monitor critical patients vital signs and trend as well as lab results, clinical plans and pharmacy approvals? So also the Director of Quality should be able to regularly monitor Quality goals and how the current measures compare to it.

In the era of Medical Interoperability, Electronic Health records and Internet of Things, customizable healthcare dashboards will be more readily available so turn around time on critical issues facing healthcare improves.