The Importance of Hospital Quality, Performance & Efficiency Metrics

Hospitals collect and analyze hundreds of data points every day. A hospital metric is a data point that provides insights into the quality of care, financial performance, and overall efficiency of the hospital. Healthcare facilities use these metrics to identify strategies to help improve patient care, financial performance, and operations.

There are three different types of hospital metrics, including quality, performance, and efficiency metrics. Here are some common examples for each:

• Hospital Quality Metrics: Readmission, patient satisfaction, and mortality rates  
• Hospital Performance Metrics: Operating margin, length of stay, and timeliness of care 
• Hospital Efficiency Metrics: Bed occupancy rate and asset utilization rates

Facilities must track and report hospital metrics for their own internal use and report them to varying agencies and organizations. For example, the National Quality Forum endorses almost 200 hospital quality metrics in an inpatient setting, and many of these metrics are reported publicly and used in various consumer reports from organizations such as:

• Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS): CMS publicly reports hospital quality metrics to help encourage improvements in the quality of inpatient care. Some of these measures indicate patient safety, mortality outcomes, etc.
• The Leapfrog Group: This organization releases the annual Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades, which measure hand hygiene compliance with hospital efficiency metrics.
• Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems: The HCAHPS Survey is a national, publicly reported survey that measures patients’ perceptions of their hospital experience. 

Track & Improve Essential Hospital Metrics with Cox Prosight

Without an efficient platform, evaluating hospital quality metrics, hospital performance metrics, and hospital efficiency metrics can quickly get complicated. Today’s smart hospitals need a real-time platform to track data, show actionable insights, and provide downloadable reports. 

Discover how Cox Prosight, a real-time location systems (RTLS) healthcare platform, is helping hospitals effectively track and improve these four hospital quality metrics:

1. Environmental Monitoring

There are numerous temperature-sensitive rooms and assets in hospitals. Patient rooms must be kept at optimal temperatures to help prevent infection and keep patients comfortable. On the other hand, sensitive items, such as pharmaceuticals, blood, specimens, and food, must be stored at very specific temperatures. 

Environmental monitoring encompasses key hospital metrics such as room temperature monitoring and refrigerator monitoring. To meet compliance standards, hospitals must track this data. However, many healthcare facilities still rely on time-consuming, manual temperature checks.

Cox Prosight helps hospitals:

• Automate daily temperature monitoring: Temperatures are monitored and logged 24/7. 
• Streamline reporting: Easily access reports for all environmentally monitored areas and devices, which can be used for compliance auditing.  
• Address refrigeration problems quickly: Receive real-time notifications when temperature problems arise. 

Our RTLS platform helps to eliminate the need for manual temperature checks, freeing up your staff to focus on patient care and address temperature problems when they happen. 

2. Asset Tracking & Utilization 

Every hospital has hundreds of assets to keep track of, maintain, and replace as needed, and managing equipment can be time-consuming. Cox Prosight helps hospitals efficiently oversee their equipment with asset tracking solutions — giving healthcare facilities the data and tools they need to improve various hospital efficiency metrics as well as hospital performance metrics.  

Using the Cox Prosight platform, hospitals can:

• Track medical equipment in real-time for patient care
• Understand asset utilization to help with inventory tracking and ordering
• Manage medical equipment for maintenance, cleaning, and more

3. Staff Duress & Response Times 

Staff duress and response time statistics are hospital quality metrics that indicate a hospital’s overall workplace safety rating. With Cox Prosight, hospitals can better track their staff duress statistics and help improve overall response times. 

When a staff member is in duress, they can press a button to trigger Prosight’s real-time notifications for security. The staff’s location is shared, which can help improve response times. 

4. Patient Journey 

The Cox Prosight platform also enables hospitals to improve their patient experience, boosting overall hospital quality metrics. Here are a few ways hospital quality metrics and patients are supported with location-based services:

Wayfinding: Seamless Hospital Navigation

For many patients, navigating a hospital can be a stressful experience, especially if they are already overwhelmed by being there. Cox Prosight helps patients and visitors seamlessly navigate the hospital with wayfinding technology. Using their phone, they can move through the hospital with seamless turn-by-turn navigation and even enable pin drops for important locations. 

Digital Front Door: Easy Access to Care

Another way Prosight can help hospitals improve quality metrics is by enabling their digital front door. This strategy helps provide patients with a seamless healthcare experience, enabling them to access important records, receipts, appointment times, and more through technology. 

Both functions provide patients with additional peace of mind and can create a more positive hospital experience. 

Leverage Cox Prosight’s Real-Time Tracking to Improve Your Key Hospital Metrics

Cox Prosight is a valuable tool for hospitals and healthcare facilities, providing them with the technology to track and improve hospital quality, efficiency, and performance metrics. Our RTLS platform is an affordable solution that helps hospitals realize ROI on their investment and expand to multiple use cases. 

To learn more about how Cox Prosight can track your key hospital metrics, please contact our team today.