TCIV: Focus on the Essentials When Analyzing Organizational Data
Behavioral healthcare providers are becoming more diligent about measuring and analyzing key performance indicators to improve their quality of care and deliver better treatment outcomes. But sifting through volumes of data to identify the most useful metrics can be a daunting process.
On Saturday morning at the Treatment Center Investment & Valuation Retreat, Deni Carise, PhD, chief science officer for Recovery Centers of America, joined Nick Stavros, CEO of Community Medical Services, and Raul Ruelas, owner of San Antonio Recovery Center, to discuss metrics-driven growth.
After the panel discussion, BHE caught up with Carise to discuss ways to cut through the noise and identify the data most useful for leadership, as well as how data should be presented to executives to help facilitate organizational improvement efficiently.
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
With so much data available, what is the key to cutting through the noise and homing in on the metrics that will provide the most valuable insights?
Carise: Some of the keys to that are only having all the data that can be overwhelming as something that senior staff sees on a regular basis. We have KPI reports every morning at 4 a.m. They are voluminous and comprehensive. But if we send them to all of our sites, that would be overwhelming to them. So, I think the key is, first of all, to measure the right things, but also particularly at the site level, present them in a way that is meaningful to the site so that the site can quickly capture what’s important and see trends over time, not just a snapshot today, clearly and quickly.
How do you determine which data points are most valuable and you’re getting the most use out of vs. the ones you might not need to be monitoring as closely?
Carise: For us, it’s things like how long do people stay in treatment, how many people who come into treatment finish a full course of treatment. These are the easy process measures that every site should be looking at. Everything from the call center to outpatient to MAT to the residential sites should get exactly what’s valuable to them. Some of those things are universal. In the call center, how many calls get answered quickly? How many calls get routed into treatment? How many people show up for treatment?
How is the data you are collecting helping at the clinical level?
Carise: Right now, the data we are talking about is while patients are in treatment. Do they get in? Do they stay in? Do they do well? What we do for the sites, it’s very clear what they need to look at and what they can have action on. For example, they can see their AMA (patients leaving against medical advice) rate compared to other sites we have. “I wonder why my AMA is higher. I can call the other sites.” There has been a real collaboration between our sites’ leadership teams where they talk to each other. “Hey, what do you do to keep people in?” We have a whole structure behind a list of things to do when someone wants to leave. Who talks to them? How do they talk to them? Who gets them their things back? How quickly do they get their belongings back so that we have enough time to talk to them and try to get them to stay in treatment, so they can see it will be helpful to them? The idea they can look at a few key metrics and can—and do—call each other, that’s really valuable.
Clinicians don’t have to collect that data—we have it. We know if someone has left treatment or how they left treatment. There are measures to make sure people are coding accurately. We give that data back to them in a way that is really easy to read. It has to be actionable and easy to digest and very concrete. Someone running a site with 180 beds doesn’t want to spend 20 minutes or an hour in the morning figuring out where data is or what it means. If they can see it right away in a snapshot, they can take action on it.
Reference
Carise D, Ruelas R, Stavros N. Panel discussion — focusing on metrics driven growth. Presented at: Treatment Center Investment & Valuation Retreat; December 10-12, 2021; Scottsdale, Arizona.
