Question

Identify 7 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that would be useful to have dashboarded at the Nursing Station and/or for the Hospital Administration. Also, justify the differences in your selections for the Nursing Station dashboard and the Hospital Administration dashboard and suggest what hospital system(s) (described in chapter 12) each KPI would be drawn from and why.

Answer 1

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are the factors used to assess, measure and monitor the performance of any organization or process in achieving the particular goals.

Seven key performance indicators (KPIs) for Nursing station are :-

• Nurse / patient ratios.
• Experience, knowledge, and skills of nurses.
• Nurses turnover.
• Interprofessional relations.
• Patient satisfaction.
• Nursing hours per patient per day.
• Accountability

Seven key performance indicators (KPIs) for hospital administration are :-

• Average hospital stay for the patients : This measures the amount of time spent by the patient in the hospital. This will depend on the type of disease and units of the hospital. Different target lengths of stay are set for different units of the hospital.
• Patient satisfaction : This measures the satisfaction of the patient towards the service of the hospital. This assessment will allow the hospital to improve its service. Higher the satisfaction of the patient, better is the performance of the hospital.
• Patient safety : This measures the capability of the hospital to protect its patient from new infections, post operation complications, etc. Higher is the safety of the patient, better is the performance of the hospital.
• Patient wait time : It measures the time taken by the hospital to start the treatment of patients. Lower the patient wait time, better is the performance of hospital.
• Treatment costs : This measures the total expenditure by the hospital to treat their patients. This is calculated according to different categories and helps to allow the right amount of money to go to the right category.
• Communication between healthcare professionals and the patients : Good communication between healthcare professionals and the patients, better is the performance of the hospital.
• Staff / patient ratio : This measures the use and capacity of staff resources. Higher staff / patient ratio determines the good quality of patient care and is a good indicator of hospital performance.

​​​​​​​There are differences between the KPIs for the nursing station dashboard and hospital administration dashboard. It is because nursing station is mainly focused on the quality of the nursing care whereas hospital administration focuses on the broader aspect of health care. Hospital administration deals with all the healthcare professionals including doctors, nurses, technicians, data operators, and other healthcare workers whereas nursing station mainly deals with nurses and patient care.