In everyday health practice, health care practitioners and organizations work to achieve a set target. They commit their energy and resources to meet the desired levels of care quality and patient safety as legally, ethically and professionally required. To achieve the desired outcomes, health care providers are guided by performance benchmarks. From a health care perspective, dashboards serve as the most reliable analytic tools for monitoring key performance indicators. They contain metrics that enable health care providers to access crucial patient statistics and intervene approximately as areas of underperformance obligate. Based on the dashboard data for substance use disorder (SUD) at an emergency room (ER), this paper explains the implications of underperformance in key areas and the role of stakeholders in performance improvement.
Dashboard Metrics for CareM Medical Center (ER): Last quarter 2019
| Area of Performance | Status | Target | Compliance Percentage |
| SUD screening | 450 | 400 | 100% |
| Waiting hour average | 80 minutes | 40 minutes | 50% |
| Motivational interviewing for SUD | 180 | 150 | 100% |
| Number of beds | 10 | 20 | 50% |
| Nurse: patient ratio | 1:5 | 1:4 | 80% |
Hospital overview: CareM Medical Center is located in Bakersfield, California. Operating majorly in an under-resourced setting, the facility targets low-income earners. For a while, substance use disorder (SUD) has been a key focus area in the center’s emergency room. The data indicates areas of underperformance, implying that interventions are necessary to change the described state.
Evaluation: Metrics not Meeting Organizational Benchmark
Health care organizations must meet benchmarks set by local, state, or federal health care laws or policies. The targets indicated on the dashboard are quality performance standards that CareM Medical Center should strive to meet consistently. Based on this data, the metrics not meeting the benchmark include SUD screening, waiting hour average, number of beds, and nurse to patient ratio. It is a genuine concern considering the areas affected critically affect patient outcomes.
Health Care Policies Establishing the Benchmarks
Located in Bakersfield, CareM Medical Center is primarily regulated by California laws. The number of patients served daily, referrals, and emergency care should follow California health law. It is also crucial to consider what federal policies recommend about the stated benchmark metrics. The average waiting time in an emergency room (ER) is forty minutes. The other area governed by law is the nurse to patient ratio in the ER. California recommends a ratio of 1:4 (Dembosky, 2020). The number of beds should be adequate to prevent overcrowding. From this evaluation, attention should shift to practices that can reduce waiting time in the ER. However, the evaluation could have been better if there was data to compare progress over time. For instance, data in the other three quarters in 2019 can help examine the progress to ascertain whether attention should be on reducing waiting time to meet the federal recommendations or other areas.
Challenges Associated with Meeting Prescribed Benchmarks
Meeting the prescribed benchmarks is always challenging from an organizational perspective. To ensure that patients are adequately served, health care providers and medical equipment must be sufficient. Interprofessional collaboration should be high enabled by modern health technologies, among other means. To achieve this, health care organizations must look for the necessary resources to address current and emerging needs. They are forced to search for operational and capital funding and invest resources to get the required financial resources. Support services must be plenty too. Since health care organizations are not investment-oriented, the inadequacy of resources usually hinders them from serving patients and the community as their strategic missions envisage.
Financial and operational challenges are central to the underperformance seen in staffing. For health care organizations to have the required n
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