Dashboard visualizations: Supporting real-time throughput decision-making

Abstract

Providing timely and effective care in the emergency department (ED) requires the management of individual patients as well as the flow and demands of the entire department. Strategic changes to work processes, such as adding a flow coordination nurse or a physician in triage, have demonstrated improvements in throughput times. However, such global strategic changes do not address the real-time, often opportunistic workflow decisions of individual clinicians in the ED. We believe that real-time representation of the status of the entire emergency department and each patient within it through information visualizations will better support clinical decision-making in-the-moment and provide for rapid intervention to improve ED flow. This notion is based on previous work where we found that clinicians' workflow decisions were often based on an in-the-moment local perspective, rather than a global perspective. Here, we discuss the challenges of designing and implementing visualizations for ED through a discussion of the development of our prototype Throughput Dashboard and the potential it holds for supporting real-time decision-making.

A Real-Time Autonomous Dashboard for the Emergency Department: 5-Year Case Study (Preprint)

“…The graphical and statistical concepts were determined during the developing period and upgraded gradually. Though there have been clinical dashboards for EDs from other studies, [15,[27][28][29] this is the first to show its long-term use, not to mention its serial upgrades.…”

“…[14] Because the situation in the ED affects the quality of care and patient outcomes, clinicians have different diagnostic and treatment strategies depending on the situation. [15] Therefore, recognizing the correct situation is becoming increasingly important to emergency medical clinicians. [16] A dashboard that fits the changing situation of the ED in real time must have the characteristics of both quality and clinical dashboards.…”

“…[17] In particular, ensuring real-time availability is challenging and important, because nonreal-time dashboards cannot support decision making. [15] This study aimed to describe the process of developing a real-time organizational dashboard for ED and to evaluate its usability.…”

Investigating Analytics Dashboards’ Support for the Value-based Healthcare Delivery Model

“…For example, dashboards were used to monitor adherence to ventilator bundle in intensive care unit [6], [49] and to prevent infection in the adult Intensive Care [7]. Some other groups of HC organizations applied dashboards to fulfil their needs for real-time tracking and access to data [4], [50]- [53]. [53] employed dashboardbased solutions for real-time monitoring and accessing data for better practice in the radiology department.…”

“…Source Primary care practitioner [40]- [42], [45], [47]- [49], [52] General Practitioner [34] Clinician [9], [17]- [21], [31], [46], [50], [55], [56], [58], [59] Physician [5], [35], [39], [42], [44], [53] Nurse [4], [33], [36], [38], [42], [50] Medical Staff [4], [6], [7], [19], [21], [33], [37], [39], [43], [50], [51], [57] Pharmacist [40], [60] Administrator and Managers [36], [53], [57] Patient [4], [17]- [21], [52],…”