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(Jon) Hello, and welcome to a new episode of Take 5 with Тhe Joint Commission.
Today I'm joined by Anita Hamid,
a Project Manager in Business Transformation, at Тhe Joint Commission.
Thanks for being here today, Anita.
(Anita) Thank you for having me.
(Jon) In this episode, we will discuss the SAFER Dashboard,
a new business intelligence tool from The Joint Commission
aimed at helping accredited organizations make data-driven decisions.
So to start us off,
Anita, healthcare is probably more complicated now than it's ever been
with large healthcare systems trying to standardize
across multiple sites, increased regulatory requirements,
and, oh, yeah, a global pandemic.
So, how do you think use of the SAFER Dashboard
will help our customers?
(Anita) Yeah, Jon, I agree with you.
I believe the sheer amount of data available today
makes data analysis difficult.
The rise in big data has immersed us into innovation,
and groundbreaking technologies.
But collecting data is not enough.
To gain insight, we must be able to make data-driven decisions
and challenge is that the amount of data multiplying year after year,
data analysis is becoming more and more difficult.
During our pilot phase,
we heard our customers tell us that
they were taking the information we would provide to them
in a PDF format or in a spreadsheet post-survey.
They were keying the same information into their own spreadsheet manually.
Some organizations had Data Analytics Departments,
but still the task of downloading the survey reports into their system
was manual and required their IT Departments
to manually maintain any ongoing changes.
As you can imagine, a bigger organization
may have the staff and resources to do such tasks,
but a smaller organization
with no resources or very little resources
may not be able to do the data collection.
These challenges did not allow them to look at a big picture.
The SAFER Dashboard is a self-search centralized data analytic tool,
which will eliminate the manual work
that the organizations have been doing for years.
This will also free up a lot of their time and resources.
And to be able to prioritize potential improvements,
we felt that transparency is critical,
so everyone is looking at the same information.
With that said, the SAFER Dashboard can be used by any of the staff members,
so the executives can view their data quickly,
and a quality manager can drill down to the site
and survey level data.
And a corporate contact can also view across all organizations.
The Dashboard will help with faster reporting, of course,
and then, reveal any trends and patterns
so that they can prioritize any areas of potential improvements.
It will also help decision-making.
Staff can pick current and historical data
to see a bigger picture.
And then, they will also be able to now compare themselves
with other Joint Commission accredited organizations.
(Jon) Kind of going along with that,
tell us a little bit about what went
into the development of the Dashboard,
and who was involved in that process.
(Anita) The Dashboard was actually created
in response to our voice of customers, and it's a customer-driven initiative.
We conducted many pilots over the two-year span,
and conducted many feedback sessions.
Our customers were part of our team
as we built out the Dashboard.
So first and foremost, I wanted to thank them for all their work.
And then, to be able to build out a meaningful Dashboard,
and to ensure we were going
to reach all our audiences and different program segments,
there was a lot to consider,
like type of metrics to include, different visualizations,
the data that will be helpful,
so that an organization can make informed decisions, etc.
It took a whole village to make this happen.
It was great teamwork.
We had cross-functional teams that worked on the project,
our Business Transformation team, our IT Department,
Communications, Marketing.
We had great leadership support,
and then, of course, you guys.
Thanks for having me on the podcast today
to get the word out.
I really appreciate everyone's help and effort.
(Jon) You've touched on several of the great aspects of the Dashboard,
but I'm curious, in your opinion, what do you think are maybe
the top three features of it,
and how they'll help the organizations.
(Anita) The Dashboard is a data management tool
and it is an interactive dashboard.
The Dashboard's available on demand,
and it automatically updates as the accreditation reports
are finalized post-survey.
The data has been aggregated into the Dashboard
for the user to view.
It's pretty quick, it gives the user
the complete picture of your post-survey process,
as it provides all surveys of that data.
And then, the Dashboard tracks and analyzes, monitors
and visually displays key metrics,
while allowing users to interact with the data,
and it enables them to make well-informed data-driven decisions.
The dashboard has been customized for many different types of users.
It's not one size fits all--
the different users can see different data,
or they may want to see the same data,
but it is meant to organize for them to see it that way.
If someone wants to just see high-level view,
and then another wants to do a deep dive,
both views are possible.
(Jon) As of this recording,
the Dashboard launched earlier this month, in April,
what are some of the things that you've been hearing
from the field regarding the use of the Dashboard?
Thus far I've only heard good things.
I've heard some of the verbatims that we've heard
was, "it's a huge time saver,"
"it will eliminate manual processes."
The organizations have shared that they can now
share high-risk findings at a glance with their organization,
that it could also help deploy resources, training, and support at cites,
based on the most frequently scored standards,
and then my favorite was that it was the best thing since sliced bread.
- (Jon) That's a great compliment to get! - (Anita) Yeah.
(Jon) This sounds like a great resource and tool for organizations
so, Anita, where can Joint Commission accredited organizations
go to see the SAFER Dashboard or learn more about it?
(Anita) Yeah, so for the accredited organizations,
the Dashboard is located on the organization's Extranet site
under the Resources and Tools,
or any organization can also go to The Joint Commission website
and type in "SAFER Dashboard" in the search field,
and it will bring them to the SAFER Dashboard web page.
(Jon) It definitely sounds like this is a great resource and tool
for our organization.
Anita, thank you so much for joining me today
to talk about the SAFER Dashboard.
(Anita) Thank you for having me.
And thanks to all of you for listening.
You can find more episodes of this program
at The Joint Commission's website, found at www.jointcommission.org
This has been Take 5 with The Joint Commission.
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