Objective:

To leverage electronic health records and other digitized data streams to create an inpatient general neurology quality dashboard; illustrate key performance indicators, and facilitate novel quality improvement initiatives.

Background:

Stroke-related neurology quality measures are well-defined and closely tracked to meet stroke center requirements. By contrast, general inpatient neurology quality measures are less established, and program funding is more limited. This initiative leveraged existing data and technology to create a dynamic inpatient general neurology key performance indicator dashboard to fuel quality improvement projects without significant additional financial resources.

Design/Methods:

Core inpatient general neurology committee reviewed neurohospitalist literature on inpatient standards and identified quality gaps. This committee then met with the health system Clinical Data Operations team quarterly to monthly between 2023-2025 to assess data from three sources (Epic (EHR), MSX (billing and claims data for readmissions) and HCAHPS (patient satisfaction). These data were fed into the visual analytics platform Tableau to create a dashboard for quality improvement, including in the areas of rapid EEG technology use, time to MRI completion, medication reconciliation and readmission rates, among others.

Results:

Dashboard was created that filtered data by date range, location, inpatient service and provider. The dashboard seamlessly integrated new data as it became available and allowed for visualization of trends over time. Dashboard was validated through a sample of chart reviews to increase accuracy. One initial project utilizing the dashboard showed 20% improvement in medication reconciliation within 24 hours of admission following an inpatient team education intervention.

Conclusions:

The modern healthcare landscape captures an enormous volume of data that can be harnessed into improving patient care if funneled thoughtfully into an accessible and responsive platform. Expansion of this quality dashboard will aid in fiscally responsible further development of standardized inpatient general neurology key performance indicators and improvement initiatives throughout the health system.