Carilion Clinic
“20% of our provider compensation is tied to performance management… this incentive has helped us drive positive behaviors and improve outcomes."
Based in Roanoke, Virginia, Carilion Clinic is a not-for-profit healthcare organization that includes hospitals and physician practices. With about 13,000 employees, around 1,000 providers, and performs over a million patient visits each year. They are a level one trauma center and a major footprint in Southwest Virginia.
With so many moving parts, performance management plays an important role in the strategic success of this organization. Darren Eversole, Director of Finance for Carilion Clinic, began utilizing ClearPoint around 7 years ago, with the goal of tracking projects and performance throughout the clinic.
Carilion Clinic’s Performance Management Goals
The clinic takes a few different measures into consideration when evaluating their performance management, which primarily focus on two perspectives: audits and compensation.
In managing the compensation component, Carilion evaluates both the senior-level leadership team, as well as the physician/provider side. They utilize this evaluation to guide their bonus structure, or what they refer to as their “tier payment” system. This creates a standard for base compensation, while also providing at-risk compensation.
Challenges They Were Facing
Prior to Clearpoint, Carilion Clinic had a clunky system that made it difficult to load data, and also to understand the data they were looking at. There were also frequent errors, which limited their confidence in what they were measuring. This made it particularly challenging to align everyone to the same goals, since individuals couldn’t clearly see their impact and what measures they were contributing to.
How They Manage Performance Today
By working with leadership, including the Chair and section Chiefs of each department, they are able to define what performance measures and indicators they can use as an incentive to drive behaviors and positive outcomes.
Following these leadership meetings, Carilion has been able to develop a scorecard with required measures across the system that are cascaded down to each department. For example, when patients take surveys to provide feedback for how care was delivered, they are able to compare results to specific metrics on their scorecard. These responses can answer questions like, “Did you feel your provider handled medications appropriately?” or “Did you feel that the plan of care was executed properly?”.
By looking at current run rates, and evaluating the percentage of improvement, these results can be evaluated at the top-level for the overall clinic scores and can be broken down all the way to the individual provider. By measuring specific care criteria and managing performance, they can then provide rewards and incentives that reinforce the positive impact.
How They Leverage ClearPoint
“Carilion currently has around 300 scorecards they manage through ClearPoint. This partnership has been great in helping us manage a large amount of data...”
“Carilion currently has around 300 scorecards they manage through ClearPoint. This partnership has been great in helping us manage a large amount of data,” Darren shares, “and it takes a lot of the weight off our shoulders at the end of the fiscal year.”
The calculations within the ClearPoint software allow Carilion to roll up results from an individual, department, and division level, to see aggregated results across the entire organization. This gives them an opportunity to evaluate performance from different perspectives, identify problem areas and gain real data insights.
Additionally, the providers and operational leaders have access to the ClearPoint dashboard and scorecards, which offer consistent visibility into performance and progress towards goals.
Everyone Rowing in the Same Direction.
“If the provider understands what they are being measured on, we see tremendous success...”
Performance Management has become a part of the culture at Carilion Clinic, with each person recognizing the part they play in the clinic’s overall success.
By tying compensation to their performance, Carilion has been able to drive behavior and improve outcomes. “If the provider understands what they are being measured on, we see tremendous success,” he shares, “but if we just handed out a measure, with no runway to understand their impact, we would see failure there.”
They have a significant amount of confidence in this system, with about 20% of their compensation being tied to performance management. This has been a big win, as it creates more transparency, and more alignment across their organization.
“Everyone is rowing in the same direction, physicians and providers have control of their results as an individual, which contributes to the overall performance of the scorecard.”
For the full story, watch our Customer Interview with Carilion Clinic.