San Juan Regional Medical Center

89% reduction in reporting time for management reports

San Juan Regional Medical Center (SJRMC) is a 198-bed, Level III trauma center in the San Juan River Valley in the Four Corners area of New Mexico. It is one of the few hospitals in the region and is committed to continuously improving its services and level of care. SJRMC has always compiled data into metrics to support continuous improvement, but its software did not support hospital processes well. Switching to ClearPoint gave SJRMC an 89% reduction in reporting time for management reports and an 83% improvement in build time for new reporting requirements. It also better supports hospital processes, gives managers more opportunities to affect performance, and helps leadership target strategic goals.

A Performance Management Case Study

A New View On Metrics

Healthcare facilities have some of the most rigorous compliance requirements of any industry, with very complex patient care and supporting business processes; lives are often on the line. Identifying the right information to track, tracking it accurately, and analyzing results in real or near-real time is key to understanding the quality and effectiveness of your services. The aging software SJRMC used was complicated to operate and lacked a comprehensive dashboard view of metrics. It had no way to compile individual metrics into a larger strategic view of the hospital's performance, which made it hard to see how any one department's daily work contributed to (or took away from) the facility's larger goals.

The old enterprise performance management solution was obsolete, which gave the data team the opportunity to find a better alternative. They needed a quick, smooth transition to a new system that captured data as actionable information.

The Value Of Simplicity

Data scientist Jennifer DeChellis was primarily responsible for implementing ClearPoint. She says, "The first thing hospital employees noticed about ClearPoint was that it was incredibly easy to use - much easier than the previous software solution, something they hadn't even identified as a problem previously. Being a hospital, that's key, because the last thing you want is to make a manager whose primary responsibility is overseeing patient care have to learn a new tool that's super complicated. So, the fact that it's very user-friendly was key for us."

They also hadn't realized how difficult their reporting process was until they began using ClearPoint. Before, it took half a day to create a single report, including getting it into a format that was readable and printable for committee meetings. Some departments weren't using the old software at all and tracked everything in Excel instead. Those departments had to do manual calculations, format graphs, print them out individually, and bring them to committee meetings every month. Reporting was tedious and time-consuming.

With ClearPoint, it now takes just minutes to produce reports that had previously taken most of the day to create. All hospital data is in ClearPoint, so calculations are done automatically. Teams press the 'export to PDF' or 'print' button and a report is generated.

Jennifer is also certain that ClearPoint's simplicity will encourage managers to use it more often. In her experience, most managers' interactions with the previous software were limited to occasional data entry for committee meetings, which they viewed as a chore. She also notes that during the migration, team members found numerous metrics buried in the old system that were no longer relevant, which shows how little the tool was used. ClearPoint's ease of use has made it easier for managers to stay on top of their metrics and work to improve them.

A Clearer Path To Better Performance

Once managers saw how easy ClearPoint was to use, they were more inclined to use it, especially once they saw how simple it was to "see" their department's performance.

The tool available previously was limited to data storage. Leaders and managers were directed to enter their data as required, but few were using it as a performance improvement tool. "It lacked the ability to tailor reports and tie data points into a comprehensive picture that you can get with ClearPoint. Now we've reached a level so that our metrics feed directly to our Balanced Scorecard," says Jennifer.

At SJRMC, every department has its own scorecard and associated metrics in ClearPoint. Just as before, all managers and assistant managers are in charge of keeping their data up to date. But Jennifer sees they're now also actively using it as a process improvement tool because it's laid out in such a way that they can easily see and understand their performance, and make impactful changes based on the data. "[Managers] can actually take charge of what they're doing because they can easily pull up the relevant data, and the insights are presented clearly and concisely. Managers now have a better overall picture of performance, and a better way to manage their departments." She notes that even senior leaders log into ClearPoint to see where they stand with SJRMC's goals and can check the status of any objective, anytime.

Acing Accreditation Audits

Performance management also matters for maintaining accreditations. The hospital is accredited by Det Norske Veritas (DNV) and is a stroke certified facility and a chest pain accredited facility. Each accreditation has its own requirements, including a number of performance metrics.

Periodic audits from the accrediting agencies require documentation of specific data points on demand. Since the switch to ClearPoint, audits are more organized and smoother. "Recently our stroke manager sat down with DNV and the audit went flawlessly. She had all her metrics ready and reviewed them one by one in a really concise manner. Our quality control manager, who sat in on the meeting, said it was the best one he'd ever attended."

ClearPoint's ability to add attachments to system artifacts (reports, dashboards, records, etc.) has been particularly helpful. External oversight bodies (auditors, government agencies, etc.) want to see not only that you're managing information but that you can prove it.

The analysis and recommendation field is another helpful feature. For example, stroke accreditation requires treatment within certain time frames. When the stroke manager reviews 10 charts in a month, it can be hard to keep track of these details. In ClearPoint she can add case-specific details, like patient timestamps, to the analysis field. With the data readily available, it is easy to report to the hospital's quality control committee how close her team came to meeting the goal and to understand what happened in individual cases.

Continuous Improvement With ClearPoint

Jennifer sees potential to expand the use of ClearPoint and would like to make it a standard auditing tool for all managers across the organization. She would also like to move all hospital projects into ClearPoint so project managers can link performance metrics to organizational goals.

In the meantime, Jennifer planned to keep working with quality control cohorts, managers, and the ClearPoint support team to find more ways the software can improve SJRMC's performance management process. "ClearPoint has the best support team I've ever worked with. When I ask how something works, within a day or sooner they've either done it already for me or pointed me in the right direction. It's really fantastic."

Want to see more business performance management examples using ClearPoint? Take a look at our other customer stories.