With each successive year, hospitals’ demand for data and performance measurement grows. No one knows better than those in the healthcare industry how closely the health of the workforce is related to overall success. Paraphrasing the often quoted words of management guru Peter Drucker, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”1
Key performance indicators (KPIs) can be used to help improve employees’ productivity, reduce sick time and, of course, improve overall wellbeing. The ability to flag problems and recognize trends quickly and easily allows executives and managers to view changes and trends as they happen and to intervene early when inefficiencies are detected.2
It’s important to tailor what we track to the applications at hand. In a hospital employee health setting, we look at different metrics than we would, for example, in an occupational health practice.3 Technology empowers us to monitor KPIs more effectively now than ever, but knowing what to measure and where to start can be hard. Here are four key performance indicators (KPIs) that should be part of every hospital employee health program:
1. Employee compliance
We expend a lot of effort and money getting the word out about the importance of timely tests and vaccinations, but are we certain our employees are getting their flu shots on time? Are we on top of respiratory fit testing (RFT) every year? Rapid monitoring of this data can help managers stay true to their compliance goals. It may also help identify divisions or subsets that need intervention, or simply more attention.
2. Patient flow and throughput
Rapidly resolving employee health issues has obvious benefits: it improves job satisfaction and gets them back in the mix faster. Time spent waiting for care is time – and money – wasted. A well-run employee health clinic has the ability to move patients through the steps from intake to discharge with speed and care.
3. Employee illness and injury rates
Illness and injury trends can often be predicted with data and experience. No one wants employees sitting at home recovering or healing instead of coming to work healthy and content. Good data can help managers identify issues early so they can effectively work to protect their teams from communicable maladies and avoidable injuries.
4. Cost of employee healthcare
With solid information at their fingertips, managers can set effective goals and determine the right balance of expenditures to get the most out of employee health programs. Watch the drivers of cost. Comparing expenses across locations and over time provides us with the insight to make intelligent changes that result in better health, stronger productivity, and more effective use of funds.
Information is power. In order to use it effectively, it’s important to ensure that specific KPIs are assigned to the appropriate managers who are accountable to them. And it’s crucial that the teams responsible for maintaining and modifying them have sustainable processes.4
The right KPIs enable managers to manage the variables in employee health. The ability to identify and monitor progress allows executives to support divisions and managers in the pursuit of productivity. A powerful, nimble platform to monitor KPIs is critical to these goals. Net Health’s Agility® software solution for employee health has recently added a new dashboard designed to provide hospital executives with at-a-glance visual insights on compliance, patient flow, illness and injury rates, and cost data.
The right KPIs can help you deliver better care for your teams at lower cost, and better care will help keep them feeling and performing at their best.
References
- Prusak L, “What Can’t Be Measured,” October 7, 2010.
-  Haughom J, “Why CMOs Need Healthcare Executive Dashboards to Lead High-Performing Systems,” May 18, 2017.
- Health, “6 Key Performance Indicators for Your Occupational Medicine Practice,” July 20, 2020.
- Staheli R, “Healthcare Dashboards: 3 Keys for Creating Effective and Insightful Executive Dashboards,” May 15, 2015.