As business administrators working in hematology/oncology, our mission should always be to provide the highest quality care to as many patients as possible. While this is a lofty goal that can be subjective in some ways, there are objective measures and tactics that can be tied to assessing success.
Administration is tasked with the responsibility of selecting the measures that should be evaluated for performance and determining how these measures will be recorded and communicated. These measures, or metrics, are more commonly referred to as key performance or practice indicators (KPIs). In general, healthcare organizations will have these metrics predetermined for them. However, the path to achieving them and how performance is communicated can vary among practices and organizations. This month we discuss tactics to track, communicate, and achieve success in the areas your healthcare organizations consider the most important.
Focusing on What Is Important
KPIs should be selected based on what drives the organization toward achieving its mission. The use of effective tools to measure key performance indicators, which will allow you to determine the health of your practice’s operations are essential. Equally important is managing and influencing change when these key performance indicators need improvement and employing a sound action strategy, including setting SMART goals, tied to those initiatives. SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.1 For example, while patient care and access are the center of the mission for healthcare organizations, financial objectives are critical to achieving those objectives. As a result, KPIs surrounding financial measures are critical to ensuring the sustainability of programs that provide patient care, and the SMART goals should center around the specific measures and time needed to reach those initiatives.
Kpi Communication—What Does Success Look Like?
Once KPIs are selected for the organization, communicating the “what and why” of these measurements before performing these assessments is important to success. A clear consistent message to your team will support what the measure is (eg, expense per encounter or likelihood to recommend a provider) as well as how the metric drives the mission of your organization. The message will promote engagement and understanding among the team as well as ways they can contribute to achieving the goal. Providing an environment for all team members included in the work performed to support the metric—be it via a meeting, documented message via email, or other communication medium—will ensure that all parties receive the same message at the same time, promoting alignment of the task.
How Are We Doing and Where Are We Headed?
After KPIs have been established and communicated to the teams responsible for performing the work to achieve the metrics, the performance monitoring and reporting phases begin. As important as setting the goal is to success, consistently assessing performance will provide insight as to how the team is trending toward achieving the goal. This monitoring will require the creation of consistent reporting packages that provide the teams with performance measures against the goal, using data that the team can trust. This reporting package should be simple to decipher and easily digested by the intended recipients to provide clarity not only on the KPI itself but also on the information that led to the measurement. As an example, if net operating income (NOI) is being used as a KPI in a practice, insight into revenues and expenses that were used to calculate the period’s NOI should be available so those responsible for action planning can determine where their efforts should be placed.
Secondly, along with easily read reports, regularly cadenced communication surrounding performance and action planning should be maintained to ensure focus is being placed regularly on the areas that are being surveyed. These communications can be in the form of group meetings (in person or virtual) or via technology platform (spreadsheet, web-based reporting tool, etc) but should be easily accessed by those receiving the reports so that the organization has the ability not only to assess performance but also to understand what actions are in place to continue favorable performance or to correct unfavorable performance.
Looking to the Future—What’s Next?
Now that KPIs and communication with team members have been established, action plans have been built to influence these metrics, and regularly scheduled monitoring has been implemented to ensure success, future programming should focus on maintaining assessment of KPI measures and reassessing KPI targets regularly. Depending on the directives of the organization, KPIs should be reassessed and developed to ensure targets are appropriate and providing continuous improvement for the organization. While annual reassessment is the most common cadence for evaluating KPI targets, some organizations might elect to review as often as quarterly; however, changing targets too frequently may lead to disorganization, confusion, and a lack of engagement with team members who are performing the work.
Operationally Aligned Kpi-Driven Success
Measurable, effective, strategically aligned KPIs are significant drivers of success in all businesses and are equally valuable in a healthcare setting. While tying an organization that has the sole purpose of providing quality medical care and services to KPIs may seem to disconnect the mission of the organization to cold metric-based performance, it is the responsibility of administrators to ensure that team members have an understanding of why specific measures and targets have been set and how strong performance in these measures directly supports the mission of the organization.
With sound decision-making on setting KPIs, your teams will find themselves aware of the goals of the organization they are serving, how those goals support patient care, and how they align with the overall strategy of the institution. Furthermore, as oncology administrators, our task is to guide the work of our teams and celebrate how their work directly drives the KPIs of the organization and leads to supporting its mission and vision.
Reference
- Doran GT. There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management’s goals and objectives. Management Review. 1981;70:35-36.