CovidStats: Development and Implementation of a Daily COVID-19 Clinical Dashboard in an Urban Teaching Hospital

Dashboards have been utilized in health care to improve quality and patient care. The purpose of our project was to create a concise, timely, and accurate dashboard for administrative and clinical leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Two authors collaborated to identify 14 metrics and design a comprehensive dashboard (CovidStats, CS) using Microsoft Excel. The dashboard was updated daily and distributed to leadership between December 2020 and April 2021. The utility of this quality measure was assessed by survey of hospital leadership.

The 14 metrics included were as follows: (1) elective surgery census threshold; (2) daily COVID admissions; (3) daily COVID discharges; (4) net COVID admissions; (5) ED (emergency department) bed holds; (6) COVID ED bed holds; (7) hospital census; (8) percent COVID census; (9) active COVID census; (10) COVID ICU (intensive care unit); (11) MICU (medical ICU) census; (12) ventilators in use; (13) high-flow oxygen devices in use; and (14) weekly hospital census. The leadership response survey revealed unanimous approval for CS, with a mean rating of 4.9 ± 0.3 (rated 1-5).

Effective clinical dashboards can be created using affordable basic computer software. Implementation of the CS dashboard conveyed relevant and timely information, which influenced the decision making of hospital leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic.