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Healthcare Reporting Dashboard Template
A healthcare reporting dashboard template allows for easy visualization of healthcare outcomes at hospitals and other healthcare organizations. These dashboards are often operational in nature, allowing doctors, nurses, and others involved in patient care to stay up-to-date on critical patient care metrics and ensure appropriate care. Due to the sensitivity of patient information, many healthcare reporting dashboards are strictly for internal use by staff actively involved in patient care.
Healthcare reporting dashboards can also be strategic, documenting a hospital’s performance over a month, quarter or year. These strategic dashboards allow the organization to identify successes and failures and adjust their strategy accordingly to reflect what’s worked and what’s fallen off track. These dashboards allow each organization to access and understand their strategic data, predict trends, and prioritize for the future.
Healthcare KPI Matrix
This dashboard displays a month-by-month comparison of different measures, with colors signifying the status of the measures. Viewers can quickly see which measures are suffering and how they have been doing over the last several months. Additionally, the dashboard pulls the mean score of other magnet hospitals for each measure, so viewers can instantly see how this hospital is doing compared to others. These benchmarks allow an organization to see if they are under or over performing in different areas compared to their peers.
Key Elements for a Healthcare Reporting Dashboard Template
A visualization of key strategic goals and their linked initiatives
Your key strategic goals show what you want to excel at, what is most important to your organization, and what you want to improve. Your linked initiatives show certain projects that you will undertake in order to meet key strategic goals. Having a visualization of key strategic goals and their linked initiatives is a great way to easily represent how each individual project or initiative contributes to reaching the larger strategic goal. Further, these visualizations serve as a good way to get individuals at every level of the organization on the same page. Seeing how these initiatives link to goals helps team members quickly understand the importance of certain projects, as well as their role in the overall strategy.
Metrics to track progress toward these strategic goals, such as –
Average Length of Stay (ALOS)
LaggingAverage number of days an admitted patient stays in the hospital per inpatient episode.
- Formula
Total inpatient days ÷ number of discharges (or admissions).- Example
- 12,600 patient days ÷ 3,000 discharges = 4.2 days ALOS.
- What good looks like
- U.S. community hospital stays average ~4.5–4.6 days, but compare by diagnosis and case mix, since shorter is better only when readmissions hold steady
- Weak → strong
- "Shorten stays" → "Cut ALOS from 4.2 to 4.0 days by Q4 without raising readmissions, owned by the Director of Case Management".
Hospital Readmission Rate
LaggingBetter when lowerShare of discharged patients readmitted to a hospital within a defined window, typically 30 days.
- Formula
(Readmissions within 30 days ÷ total discharges) × 100.- Example
- 240 ÷ 3,000 = 8% readmission rate.
- What good looks like
- U.S. 30-day all-cause readmission runs ~14–15%, and CMS financially penalizes excess readmissions, so beating the national rate is the goal
- Weak → strong
- "Reduce readmissions" → "Cut 30-day all-cause readmissions to under 10% for heart-failure patients by year-end, owned by the VP of Quality".
Hospital-Acquired Infection (HAI) Rate
LaggingBetter when lowerRate of infections patients contract during their hospital stay, normalized to patient exposure.
- Formula
(Number of HAIs ÷ patient days) × 1,000.- Example
- (45 ÷ 30,000) × 1,000 = 1.5 infections per 1,000 patient days.
- What good looks like
- on any given day in 2023, ~1 in 38 U.S. hospital patients had at least one healthcare-associated infection, and patients were 27% less likely to have one than in 2015; the goal is a steady fall toward zero
- Weak → strong
- "Prevent infections" → "Cut HAIs from 1.5 to 1.2 per 1,000 patient days by year-end, owned by the Infection Prevention Manager".
Show all 6 KPIs
Mortality Rate
LaggingBetter when lowerShare of admitted patients who die during their hospital stay, often risk-adjusted for case mix.
- Formula
(In-hospital deaths ÷ total discharges) × 100.- Example
- 60 ÷ 3,000 = 2% mortality rate.
- What good looks like
- roughly 2% of U.S. hospitalizations end in an in-hospital death, but compare risk-adjusted rates to expected, since case mix drives the raw number; lower is better
- Weak → strong
- "Save more lives" → "Cut risk-adjusted in-hospital mortality from 2% to 1.8% by year-end, owned by the VP of Quality via sepsis bundle compliance".
Patient Satisfaction (HCAHPS)
LaggingBetter when higherStandardized survey measuring patients' perspectives on their hospital care, often summarized as the share giving a top-box rating.
- Formula
(Top-box "9 or 10" overall ratings ÷ total survey respondents) × 100.- Example
- 1,440 ÷ 1,800 = 80% top-box score.
- What good looks like
- track the top-box (9–10) share against the national CMS percentile; the target is steady movement up the percentile, not a single fixed number
- Weak → strong
- "Improve patient experience" → "Raise HCAHPS overall top-box rating to 82% across med-surg units by Q3, owned by the Chief Nursing Officer".
Bed Occupancy Rate
LaggingProportion of available inpatient beds occupied over a period, indicating capacity utilization.
- Formula
(Occupied bed days ÷ available bed days) × 100.- Example
- 25,500 ÷ 30,000 = 85% occupancy.
- What good looks like
- U.S. hospital occupancy averaged ~75% after the pandemic, and ~85% is a widely used planning ceiling, above which surge room and patient flow suffer
- Weak → strong
- "Manage capacity better" → "Hold adult inpatient occupancy between 80% and 85% every month this year, owned by the Director of Patient Flow".
Intended Audience
This dashboard is intended to be viewed by doctors, nurses and others involved in patient care. They can utilize this dashboard to stay up to date on critical patient care metrics and ensure appropriate care. Further, as a leader in your organization these dashboards provide you a way to foster motivation to keep meeting goals or work harder to reach future goals, as well as get individuals on the same page.