Performance Dashboard Helps Reduce Unnecessary Product Use

By Tom Wadsworth, Brian Graves, Steve Glass, A. Marc Harrison, Chris Donovan, Andrew Proctor

Sixteen years ago, Cleveland Clinic of Cleveland began tracking key performance indicators that had an impact on financial performance. At the time, Cleveland Clinic’s CEO sought ways to better monitor and manage performance across the organization’s multiple facilities.

The business intelligence initiative has helped Cleveland Clinic reduce costs and enhance quality of care, even during periods of financial turmoil.

Here’s just one example: Cleveland Clinic created a “blood utilization dashboard” to examine why the organization was a high consumer of blood products, which are expensive, and to set parameters for their use. To address this issue, two basic questions needed to be answered:

• Who ordered the blood product?
• What are the parameters for determining whether a blood product is needed?

The use of a blood utilization dashboard enabled Cleveland Clinic to extract physician ordering information and the hemoglobin level of the patients for whom blood products were ordered from the organization’s data systems and analyze, down to the department and physician, when blood products were ordered for patients with a hemoglobin level greater than or equal to nine (patients for whom blood products may not have been needed).

The availability of specific and transparent data drove performance improvement in this area. Establishing a blood utilization dashboard has raised awareness of the need to quantify when blood products are used across the organization, and has reduced blood product use by approximately $400,000. It is important to note that this dashboard does not replace clinical judgment: There may be cases where ordering blood for patients with a hemoglobin level greater than or equal to nine is appropriate. The dashboard raises awareness, reports trends, and identifies outliers.

The success of Cleveland Clinic’s enterprise performance management initiative has led to additional investment in the program.
 

This article is excerpted from a longer feature in the October 2009 hfm magazine. Read the full article. (HFMA membership required.)


Tom Wadsworth is managing director, business intelligence, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland (wadswot@ccf.org).Brian Graves is global practice leader for healthcare, Kronos, Inc., Chelmsford, Mass., and a member of HFMA’s Massachusetts-Rhode Island Chapter (bgraves@kronos.com). Steve Glass is CFO, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, and a member of HFMA’s Northeast Ohio Chapter (glasss@ccf.org). A. Marc Harrison is vice chairman of professional staff affairs and director of medical operations, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland (harrism1@ccf.org). Chris Donovan is senior director, finance, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, and a member of HFMA’s Northeast Ohio Chapter (donovac@ccf.org). Andrew Proctor is administrative director, medical operations, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland (proctoa@ccf.org).