Data to Analytics to Insight: Role of rtDashboard at St. Joseph Mercy Health

Introduction

Ever since organizations have started to use IT to streamline operations, they had two primary goals: improve operational productivity and enhance decision making. The first goal led to the automation of several operational activities which in turn led to inter-departmental-unit integration of transactions with customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. The data collected from these transactions led to analysis of gaps in responsiveness and/or inefficient use of resources so they can be addressed quickly and effectively. The second goal is to enhance decision making in a continually evolving market landscape, which is increasingly influenced by advances in technology and growing demand for consumer services using these technologies. Traditionally, organizations have used executive information systems or performance dashboards to aggregate data from transactions into key performance indicators (KPI) to assess performance gaps and develop strategic plans to address these gaps or revise targets for KPI.

Organizational KPIs representing management goals get cascaded down to the operational units to direct and influence their activities. However, the velocity of change occurring in the marketplace needs a dynamic approach: a real time aggregation of operational data into KPIs for a daily or weekly review to gain insights. These insights surface evolving changes in the market (external intelligence) or changes in customer expectations reflected by deviations in operational level targets (internal intelligence). Such continual insight gained from analysis of external and internal sources must be integrated with established KPIs, so that key decision makers can continue to align goals and actions.

Continual feedback to make organizations adapt to external environment is an essential characteristic of complex adaptive systems. Leadership of these organizations must support adaptation using any process methodology and/or an artifact that both tracks real time data in order to make KPIs both current and relevant, as well as integrate this data with key human insights. This chapter discusses how a rtDashboard (real time dashboard) has become a key artifact--along with multiple process changes--to help a hospital align their goals in both the operating units and in administration, and to adapt over time both the artifact and the planning process in order to reflect the changing environment. The chapter is organized into four sections:

• 1.

  Context and complexity of decision making in the hospital under discussion.

• 2.

  Stage 1: Transitioning from current to exploratory platform (Phases I and II) – Current process uses an adhoc technology and process environment that is highly dis-jointed and semi-automated. The exploratory platform integrates data from operational units to seek goal alignment at the corporate level, while creating a culture of accountability and responsibility.

• 3.

  Stage 2: Transitioning from an exploratory platform to a mature platform (Phases III and IV) – Once shown to be effective, the next two phases are used to integrate data from multiple systems and support the decision needs of both units and hospital administration, while seeking greater acceptance and use within the broader healthcare ecosystem.

• 4.

  Stage 3. Going forward –Mature to Dynamic Platform: Moving the artifact and supporting processes to become a dynamic platform that combines multitude of data and insights from internal and external sources.

The key takeaways from this chapter are the following:

• •

  Learn about how designing technical artifacts to improve decision making must integrate the roles of multiple actors (both machine and human) synergistically.

• •

  Building maturity in the use of machines and human actors is an evolving process, and each needs to adapt to changes in the other if artifacts must become an integral part of an organizational resource

• •

  Complex environments organizations operate in today call for an organizational system, people, machines or both, to integrate resources (technology and data) to gain insights and adapt to stakeholder expectations