Healthcare Dashboard Design Best Practices and Key Considerations
Designing Healthcare Dashboards
Building a healthcare performance dashboard requires following key steps to provide a user-friendly design and protect patient privacy. One of the biggest challenges health dashboard UI designers face is how to arrange data aesthetically and effectively, without introducing unneeded clicks or scrolling.
Charts, diagrams, and status bars are among the most common features of healthcare dashboards. Fitting them all into one screen adds a layer of difficulty for medical dashboard UI designers at dashboard design agencies. The one-screen approach is a big goal, as it is extremely desirable according to most healthcare providers with little to no time to search for critical information.
A thoughtful approach can turn a dashboard for healthcare into a well-organized launch point for data-driven decision-making. They can assist users in the:
- Identifying positive or negative trends
- Interpreting performance metrics
- Measuring inefficiencies
When you know what to include and what to avoid, building a dashboard for healthcare should turn your data into an actionable tool for delivering better patient outcomes and expediting inefficiencies within the practice or care facility.
A dashboard in healthcare is a business tool that hospitals and other healthcare providers use to keep track of patient information, dashboard performance indicators, other changes in healthcare regulations, patient alerts like ER visits, and many other types of medically relevant data. Sometimes called healthcare KPI dashboards or clinical dashboards, they can monitor relevant points for an entire business or a specific process or department.
Some of the best healthcare dashboards offer improved visualization and intuitive tools that allow providers, admin, and executive staff to quickly understand complex information. By compiling information from multiple sources, healthcare dashboards offer accurate insights into performance as compared to benchmarks. Those metrics are displayed in real-time in an easily accessible central location.
There are several kinds of dashboards in healthcare:
- A patient care dashboard focuses on providing quick and easy access to patient medical histories, important allergy information, insurance information, and other relevant information that healthcare professionals can use to provide quality care.
- A healthcare performance dashboard measures patient outcomes, so healthcare facilities can analyze which departments and even individual healthcare practitioners need additional intervention or professional development, and which are producing stellar outcomes that can help create lessons learned for systemwide improvements.
- A doctor dashboard design prioritizes the information physicians and other healthcare practitioners need to access for delivering quality patient outcomes during patient visits and within short intervals of time.
Business intelligence in hospitals
Business intelligence in healthcare doesn’t look much different than in any other organization. The sole purpose is to leverage software and services to collect data and transform it into actionable insights. One of the most effective processes for doing so combines:
- Best practices
- Business Analytics
- Data mining
- Data visualization
- Data tools and infrastructure
The term “business intelligence” isn’t new. It was coined in 1865 by Richard Millar Devens to describe how a banker profited from information he gathered and acted on before his competitors could do the same.
Inferring Clinical Workflow Efficiency via Electronic Medical Record Utilization – Scientific Figure on ResearchGate. Available from httpswww.researchgate.net. Examples-of-patients-associated-with-B1-and-B2_tbl1_316491758 [accessed 15 Aug 2022]
Clinical BI improves clinical workflow
Today, any healthcare provider or facility that deals with large quantities of digital data must use healthcare BI to track results. Business intelligence in healthcare allows clinics, doctors’ offices, hospitals, and labs to organize some of the most significant categories of data:
- Clinical
- Financial
- Operational
A healthcare analytics dashboard is the most effective tool for helpfully managing medical data. Hospital BI can take data points from these three areas to build a strong foundation for improved patient care outcomes, reduced costs, and treatment efficiency.
Additionally, accessing primary healthcare electronic medical record data can quickly improve clinical workflows to prevent inefficiencies in diagnosing patients and creating ineffective treatment plans.
Benefits of using dashboards in healthcare
As the healthcare environment evolves, so does the sheer volume of patient and practice performance data. Despite a large amount of information, some healthcare facilities struggle to make effective use of it. A well-designed health information management dashboard from a UI design agency can turn that wealth of material into easy-to-understand solutions that benefit all stakeholders.
There are many benefits of using dashboards in healthcare. Some of the most important include improving patient outcomes and maximizing revenue.
Improving patient care and outcomes
A healthcare KPI dashboard that prioritizes patient data allows healthcare facilities to easily identify gaps in patient care that can compromise safety and the effectiveness of treatment plans. Physicians and other healthcare practitioners can monitor:
- Daily patient averages
- Key demographics
- Total patient volume
- Time spent with providers
- Unexpected return visits
These and other data points can determine whether staffing-to-patient ratios are adequate for delivering quality patient outcomes. Person-centered patient dashboards also greatly reduce adverse outcomes for individuals with complex healthcare needs. When a patient needs are met at all levels, it improves the overall patient experience.
Maximizing healthcare facility revenue
When healthcare facilities identify areas where the patient experience can be improved, they also inadvertently maximize their profitability. Every hospital, medical practice, and healthcare facility has the potential to tap unrealized areas to boost their revenue streams. This may sound like a “money-only” goal, however, we know that when doctors provide better care patient outcomes improve along with their bottom line. It all comes down to running an effective and efficient practice.
Dashboard metrics in healthcare use analytics to track key indicators. A dashboard design agency can help healthcare businesses track claims reimbursement cycles and payer-specific reimbursement trends. Other valuable data include facility and healthcare practitioner performance and the effects of telehealth policies.
Increasing the oversight of healthcare operations via medical dashboard design offers a solid return on investment. A dashboard for hospital management systems provides more oversight of finances, making it easier to identify opportunities for cash flow improvement.
Pinpointing areas of growth
Patients have more options than ever before in today’s healthcare climate. Working with healthcare UI/UX design services that understand this basic principle can help your healthcare facility make better decisions about the most effective way to achieve sustainable growth. Whether it’s through the expansion of services or better staff training, you can use the data to pinpoint the best approach.
KPIs — such as the length of time a patient spends in a hospital waiting room before being triaged and reimbursement rates and cancellations — can help your healthcare facility track productivity. They can also be used to identify areas of improvement so your facility can attract more patients and enhance their experience.
Pinpointing areas of growth is especially important for private physician practices, which depend on patient retention and attracting new clients to remain profitable. The right medical dashboard design can help with both.
Learn also about how data visualization is changing healthcare for the better.
Custom dashboard design for healthcare
A dashboard for a hospital management system and a doctor dashboard design serve different purposes. Each has a specific set of guidelines and best practices to follow. Custom dashboard design for healthcare must translate across all marketing channels simultaneously to guide decision-makers toward better results.
Whether your goal is to track revenue cycle performance or monitor processes to boost efficiency, the right custom dashboard design for healthcare can help you achieve your objective. It’s important to follow several steps to ensure your healthcare organization has created a dashboard for healthcare that aligns with your goals.
Some of the considerations include:
- Choosing the right metrics is arguably the most important part of a medical dashboard design. Healthcare organizations use KPIs to gain insight into their clinical, financial, and operational performance. Select a manageable number of metrics that pinpoint your goals.
- Combining relevant data into a single dashboard makes it easier to access information. Many healthcare organizations compile data from multiple sources. Integrating it into a unified view can provide a more accurate picture of healthcare metrics like financial and operational performance.
- Enabling secure and easy access to your healthcare dashboard metrics includes protection for sensitive patient information per HIPAA and other privacy guidelines. Additionally, those authorized to use the dashboard must find it convenient and accessible.
Medical dashboard UI design best practices
There is such a thing as too much data. Medical dashboards can quickly become overflowing with information, impacting user-friendliness. Including a manageable number of metrics is one of the key components of medical dashboard UI design best practices.
Other hospital dashboard design best practices include:
- Clear visualizations. The goal of any medical dashboard is to provide relevant information in an easily understandable format. Complex dashboards make it difficult for users to access and share data.
- Simple colors and styles. Keep it simple when choosing colors and design styles for your medical dashboard. Modern-looking dashboards are the way of the future. Think clean and crisp with plenty of white space. For colors, you can stick with your official company’s branding colors or go a completely different way. Whatever you do, be consistent.
- Data categories. Information overload can happen if you try to cram everything into one page. Don’t be afraid to create data categories to keep things organized.
- Interactive features. Drilling down on data is what makes medical dashboards useful to any healthcare organization. Consider incorporating interactive elements that allow users to explore data points further.
Hospital dashboard metrics and KPI
A healthcare KPI dashboard serves as an analytics tool for easier and more accurate monitoring of healthcare metrics. From your health information management dashboard, you can track key indicators of operational performance, including:
- The average number of patients seen during operational hours
- The frequency of medication errors (prescribing and administering)
- The approximate amount of time patients must wait before being treated
- The effectiveness of infection control procedures
- The overall satisfaction of patients
Before your healthcare organization can design the best healthcare dashboard, it must first establish a baseline for KPIs. Medical graphic design companies use your baseline to establish a starting point for tracking progress.
Healthcare dashboard examples
The medical app design industry has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years. With the growing demand for dashboard metrics in healthcare comes unique healthcare app design challenges. Choosing a digital product design agency that prioritizes transformational design strategy and functionality is key to creating the best healthcare dashboard for your organization.
If you’re wondering how to create a healthcare dashboard that works well with your KPIs, you can use these examples as a framework.
Problem: Patient No-Shows
Outpatient practices struggle with this common problem. When patients don’t show up, you’re left with an open spot you may or may not be able to fill. If this happens frequently enough, it can eat into your profitability. It can also affect patient satisfaction by increasing wait times for other patients.
The solution: Use dashboard metrics in healthcare to predict which patients may not show up (and when), so you can take a proactive approach to schedule.
Problem: Quality of Care
Hospitals particularly struggle with this healthcare metric, constantly striving to improve patient satisfaction by increasing the quality of care they receive. They monitor doctors, nurses, and other healthcare practitioners to determine what role they play in whether patients view their experiences as positive or negative.
The solution: Tracking patient satisfaction provides hospitals and other healthcare providers with actionable insights on how to improve every department or division based on patient feedback.
