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So You Think You're Compliant? What's Keeping You Awake?

By Prime Care Tech Marketing on Wed, Dec 23, 2015 @ 01:27 PM

CompliantRest assured. LTPAC Clinical executives can know rather easily.

What keeps you up at night? When I ran SNFs, many things would intrusively leap onto the stage of my dreams, stealing the limelight. Their discordant presence would dash the quiet and restful performance currently playing, causing me to start into a sudden and unwelcome wakefulness. It was one thing to steal the limelight, it was another to completely take over the show and lock the stage door to my more sedate and slumber-inducing dreams. Stifling a cry, I would sit bolt upright in bed, beads of sweat on my furrowed brow. One of those frequent limelight-stealing imps was a nagging doubt about my facility’s compliance.

Compliant to what? Federal and State regulations? Fire and safety? The Fair Labor Standards Act? Safe Harbor? HIPAA? Corporate standards and objectives? The list goes on and on, each list member competing animatedly for my attention. “No sleep tonight,” I’d groan. But times have changed and so has technology potentially barring the stage doors to unsolicited dream disturbers.

In the days before automated data mining and business intelligence (BI)-generated dashboards and reporting, I would have to make a mental note to investigate if and how compliant we were, recognizing that the research alone would take quite a lot of time, assuming no interruptions (silly me), sorting through charts, files, and printouts. But today WITH BI at a manager’s fingertips, those with compliance concerns, including clinical managers, have ready access to critical Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). With Business Intelligence, clinical managers can conveniently view a variety of KPIs which they can make their own. (I’ll get to that shortly.)

Let’s take a look at some of the KPIs clinicians can view to discover in measurable terms if their areas of concern are compliant. With regular input either directly from the data which resides within their clinical application automatically “pumped” into the data warehouse or keyed in directly, clinicians have access to frequently refreshed information. This information can include such KPIs as in-house-acquired or community-acquired pressure ulcers with the number of residents with pressure ulcers at what stages and at what percent of the average daily census over a month’s period of time or trended over a 12-month period.

Restraints? Weight loss? Anti-psychotic use? Infections? Readmissions? Falls/Accidents? Sentinel events, such as dehydration or fecal impaction? Indwelling catheters? Pain management? Hour per patient/resident day compared to state standards and to budget? Overtime usage? And more. If the data exists, the information can be viewed in the BI dashboard.

Now, I referred earlier to managers making KPIs their own. How about comparing the KPIs against benchmarks the clinical team has created based on regulations and company/facility-established standards, usually set to exceed the regulatory requirements? It’s all in one dashboard. No longer do clinicians have to wait for reports to be researched, compiled, published, and distributed. Log in and find out. No more uncertainty. Just discover. Take action. Get results.

With BI, this potentially sleep-disruptive concern can be put to rest. It’s called peace of mind. Take a dose of BI every day and sleep well.

Business Intelligence

Topics: business intelligence Data Mining clinical KPIs Losing sleep KPI benchmarks data warehouse compliance

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