Showing Them What They Do, Not What They Think They Do
Cleveland Clinic uses data analytics to show clinicians the true measure of their performance and drive improvements at the intersection of financial and clinical operations.
Absent evidence to the contrary, everyone thinks they’re doing the best job they possibly can. Data analytics at Cleveland Clinic has proved itself to be that “contrary,” to the benefit of its clinical practice and patients.
Steve Davis, M.D., starts simple. “If you ask a clinician if they always wash their hands before they see a patient, they’re going to say ‘Of course I do.’ But that’s not always the case,” says the chair of the department of pediatric critical care medicine and the head of ICU operations for the health system.
Cleveland Clinic has developed a program where staff from the compliance department anonymously watch workers in different departments and record whether they do in fact follow hand hygiene guidelines. Their findings are uploaded into Cleveland Clinic’s enterprise analytics system and are accessible via a tab in an analytics dashboard.
Four years ago, the system was showing a 40 percent compliance rate with hand hygiene guidelines. Now that compliance rate is staying well over 90 percent, staving off a significant number of hospital-acquired infections and other complications arising from hygiene issues. And that’s the tip of the iceberg on how clinical analytics coupled with a focus on evidence-based practice has enabled Cleveland Clinic to raise the bar on quality while looking to reduce costs on a virtually real-time basis.
