Skilled Nursing News talks with Samantha Vosloo, Director of Value-Based Care at PointClickCare, in this interview series. With her healthcare and nursing home administration background, Vosloo shares her thoughts on what makes a great clinical dashboard. This article covers the important data points, how dashboards help with patient care and staffing, and the use of predictive analytics.
Skilled Nursing News: What are the three most important data points for an ideal skilled nursing clinical dashboard and why?
Samantha Vosloo highlights the need for dashboards tailored to specific jobs. For nursing home administrators, seeing the overall patient population is key to planning daily tasks. Predictive data, like return-to-hospital rates and estimated discharge dates, are also very important. These help identify which patients need urgent attention, making it easier to manage long-term care efficiently.
Vosloo explains, "Predictive change in acuity score, which signals a change in condition for our residents, will be most important. That's because this information makes it easier to triage where our critical focus needs to be throughout our day."
Skilled Nursing News: How does an ideal clinical dashboard drive patient care decisions for operators?
Clinical dashboards show the right data to help each person in their role. For doctors, filters can highlight which patients need immediate care, such as those at risk of hospital readmission or close to discharge. This helps doctors make better use of their time and improve patient outcomes. Nurses and administrators also get tools to make quick care decisions and see a complete view of patient needs.
By using a clinical dashboard, healthcare providers can focus on the most critical patients. For example, a doctor can quickly see which patients have had significant changes in their condition since their last visit, allowing them to prioritize those patients during rounds. This targeted approach ensures that time is spent where it is most needed, leading to better patient care and more efficient use of resources.
Skilled Nursing News: How does the ideal clinical dashboard help optimize reimbursement for operators?
As healthcare moves from fee-for-service to value-based care, it's crucial to spot and fix gaps in documentation and care. A good clinical dashboard helps teams see these gaps, ensuring they get credit for their care. For example, correctly documenting the level of care given can improve reimbursement by showing the true intensity of the services offered.
An effective clinical dashboard can identify discrepancies between the care provided and the care documented. This helps ensure that all services are accurately recorded, maximizing reimbursement opportunities. For instance, if a high level of care is provided but documented as a lower level, the facility could take advantage of appropriate reimbursement. A dashboard can highlight these issues, allowing for corrections that ensure the facility is compensated for all the care it delivers.
Skilled Nursing News: How can the clinical dashboard improve staffing efficiency?
With more complex patient needs, nursing centers must change how they staff their facilities. Clinical dashboards help match staff levels with patient needs. By collecting data on patient conditions, dashboards allow leaders to place staff where they are most needed. This approach is better than old staffing models, which were based on simple patient counts.
There are two primary factors at play. First, the way that skilled nursing centers have historically staffed their buildings differs from how they need to be staffed in the future. The residents we care for are more clinically complex than ever, so we need more skilled clinicians and support services at the bedside. To provide that direct care, we need their time freed up without the burden of over-documentation or cumbersome documentation. Staffing is a finite resource.
Second, skilled nursing centers need technology to help support the staff's competency and capacity to take care of the residents. Having a dashboard that can aggregate the clinical needs of the resident population will allow leaders to tie staff capacity to that need. This allows them to place team members where they will most effectively drive outcomes. For instance, the skilled nursing center can't just put six CNAs in a long-term care unit and know that that will be effective in providing the needed care. The leaders need data to drive efficiency, enabling them to more adequately address the ever-changing complexities of the residents they're serving. When we think about this clinical dashboard, it will allow skilled nursing centers to gain insight into those personal items.
Previously, skilled nursing centers used a model where we may staff at a particular level, given our census or the unit type, but that's something that can't be done anymore to rightfully address the complex and varying needs of the residents in our communities.
Skilled Nursing News: How would you like to see the clinical dashboard integrated with predictive analytic tools?
Predictive analytics work well with clinical dashboards, offering insights that help make clinical decisions. Analytics provide guidance for new nurses, while experienced nurses get streamlined data to focus on critical tasks. This ensures that all staff can deliver high-quality care and be recognized for their efforts.
Predictive analytics help staff foresee potential issues before they become serious. For example, analytics can predict which patients are at higher risk of complications, allowing nurses to monitor these patients more closely. This proactive approach can prevent problems and improve patient outcomes, making the care process more efficient and effective.
Skilled Nursing News: Who do you think are the most important roles in a skilled nursing organization to have access to the clinical dashboard?
Many roles in a skilled nursing facility should have access to clinical dashboards. Administrators, nursing directors, unit managers, and support teams all contribute to achieving good patient outcomes. Dashboards give these professionals the data they need to make informed decisions and improve patient care.
To oversee a population, especially as an administrator and not a nurse, I have to rely very heavily on the smart individuals around me to execute the goals I've set. Those individuals across the organization need to have access to that clinical dashboard. When we think about clinical leadership, like the director of nursing or other unit managers, we want them to have systematic oversight of the clinical outcomes of the center. We want them to have insights at the point of care — for example, pain documented the previous day — to help influence their actions when interacting with the residents. And one persona that I think is often overlooked is the ancillary care team. For example, in physician and pharmacy services, these people contribute to the outcomes the SNFs can achieve in their building. They need to be involved in the daily operation of the center. Access to a dashboard allows them to focus only on what they're needed for because, like everyone else, their workload is vast.
Skilled Nursing News: What are some things you think SNFs could do to improve the collection of patient health data?
Healthcare providers need a common language to communicate across different care settings. Creating a standard language through clinical dashboards helps share important information between hospitals, health plans, case managers, families, and primary care providers. This unified approach improves care coordination and helps everyone work together for better patient outcomes.
The healthcare ecosystem is so connected now. As I said before, the types of residents we care for are more clinically acute than ever. With that comes the importance of creating a unified language that allows entities to communicate with each other across the continuum of care. When you think about that and all of the people who can impact the outcomes of the residents — the health system, the health plan, the case manager, the family, the primary care in the community — all of these entities speak different languages. To combat this, the industry needs to pay some time and attention to creating a unified language through the clinical dashboard so that we can influence each other and impact care across the continuum. We all have valuable insights into our residents' care history, preferences, wants, and needs. By having a way to interact with each other across the continuum of care, we're empowered to be more efficient in how we impact outcomes.
Conclusion
Samantha Vosloo's insights show how clinical dashboards can transform skilled nursing care. By focusing on key data points, optimizing reimbursement, improving staffing, and using predictive analytics, clinical dashboards help healthcare providers give better care. As the industry changes, adopting these tools will be crucial for meeting the needs of patients in skilled nursing facilities.
For skilled nursing centers aiming to improve their operations, investing in advanced clinical dashboards and predictive analytics tools is a smart move toward better patient care and operational efficiency.
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