An exploratory study of an intranet dashboard in a multi-state healthcare system

Healthcare executives may be unaware of effective uses of evidence-based guidelines within their healthcare system. The primary objective in this research was to design and implement an automated intranet dashboard reporting performance measures for community acquired pneumonia. A secondary objective was to describe how this might increase cooperation and coordination within a healthcare delivery system. Principals of user centered design and information management were used in the construction of the intranet dashboard. Descriptive research approaches were used with a convenience sample of healthcare executives completing a baseline survey measuring satisfaction with receiving reports and cooperation between geographically distributed facilities. After three months of exposure to the dashboard, a follow-up survey was administered. Usage patterns were examined from server log files; qualitative exit interviews were also conducted with six healthcare executives. A functional dashboard was created with limited resources, data quality issues presented as barriers to automation. Descriptive analysis found substantial increases on a number of survey items, suggesting that the dashboard contributes toward increased satisfaction communication and coordination among healthcare executives. Findings should be balanced by the limited rigor in the research design and the web server log files which found few visitations to the dashboard. Qualitative data analysis suggests that current reporting mechanisms are suboptimal for healthcare executives and that one solution may be dashboards.