Clinician dashboard views and improvement in preventative health outcome measures: a retrospective analysis

Measuring and reporting outcome data is fundamental for health care systems to drive improvement. Our electronic health record built a dashboard that allows each primary care provider (PCP) to view real-time population health quality data of their patient panel and use that information to identify care gaps. We hypothesized that the number of dashboard views would be positively associated with clinical quality improvement.

We performed a retrospective analysis of change in quality scores compared to number of dashboard views for each PCP over a five-month period (2017-18). Using the manager dashboard, we recorded the number of views for each provider. The quality scores analyzed were: colorectal cancer (CRC) screening rates and diabetic patients with an A1c greater than 9% or no A1c in the past year.

Data from 120 PCPs were included. The number of dashboard views by each PCP ranged from 0 to 222. Thirty-one PCPs (25.8%) did not view their dashboard. We found no significant correlation between views and change in quality scores (correlation coefficient = 0.06, 95% CI [- 0.13, 0.25] and - 0.05, 95% CI [- 0.25, 0.14] for CRC and diabetes, respectively).

Clinical dashboards provide feedback to PCPs and are likely to become more available as healthcare systems continue to focus on improving population health. However, dashboards on their own may not be sufficient to impact clinical quality improvement. Dashboard viewership did not appear to impact clinician performance on quality metrics.