Establishing an oncology quality dashboard for improvement.

Abstract

223 Background: Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), a national network of five hospitals, formed a Quality Improvement Committee to bring together both clinical and administrative leadership (physician, nursing, pharmacy and quality) across the enterprise vested in the oversight of quality and patient safety. Tasked with facilitating and driving measurement and improvement the group established a Quality dashboard housing metrics of importance given current performance, evidence-based practice, and evolving external standards. The dashboard includes a mix of outcome, process, and structure measures with targets, both externally driven and CTCA established. Methods: The dashboard houses data sourced from a multitude of systems and is segmented into clinically relevant categories such as Infection Prevention, Nursing, Medication Management, and Medical Oncology to name a few. These categories are further broken down into specific measures, reported by quarter, and color-coded (red/yellow/green) to display progress. Targets are established based upon external benchmarks, where data is available. Each metric is also graphically displayed, trending the 6 most recent quarters of data as another visual reference. Finally, a glossary was created to standardize key measure details across the enterprise for accurate data collection including documentation of source, numerator, denominator, references, inclusions, exclusions and rationale. Data is updated monthly to reflect most current performance and promote timely intervention. Results: Since development of the Quality dashboard, CTCA has experienced various red to yellow to green progressions as well as upped its targets indicating significant advancement in performance. Standard data collection and visual identifiers within one repository has enabled CTCA to accurately focus time and resources where needed in order to continually improve care. Conclusions: The establishment of the enterprise-wide quality dashboard has led to great collaboration within CTCA’s network of hospitals. The display of the data allows both a focus upon individual and network strengths and opportunities for improvement as well as a mechanism for communicating shared goals.