I’d like you to take a moment to think about the purpose of the dashboard in your car. It’s designed to provide continuous monitoring of various components of the vehicle, which are critical to ensuring optimal performance of the car and that it will get you where you want to go. If cars were not equipped with dashboards, unanticipated problems would be very likely.
I use this analogy as I’ve seen a similar scenario play out far too many times in medical and dental practices. Once the business is up and running, there is no mechanism in place to evaluate key performance indicators, which is often referred to as “Dashboard Reporting”. These dashboard reports function much like the dashboard in our cars, as they are designed to monitor vital areas of your business operations and help achieve peak performance.
Some EHR/Practice Management systems have integrated dashboard reports and there are also data mining products that pull the information from your existing system. While there are a multitude of key performance indicators, following are examples of some of the more commonly used measures:
The first step is to understand each measure and how it impacts your practice. Next, you need to identify which measures are most closely aligned with your practice goals and determine how frequently you need to monitor the measures. Lastly, be sure to communicate these measures to your team members and get them engaged, as this will make the process even more effective. You may want to consider some type of rewards system if the practice is able to improve the dashboard scores and maintain optimal levels of performance.