Care pathways dashboard as a lever for hospital management

Möbius recently launched the Value4Health dashboard, an initiative that aims to add value to healthcare by using data intelligently. This dashboard is a kind of control stick for hospitals: this is how you control processes, costs, revenues of care pathways, linked to quality. Some hospitals immediately believed in it. One of them was an enthusiastic Rudy Maertens (CEO AZ Alma Eeklo).

Sarah Misplon (Möbius): “We include all activities, costs and revenues (via BFM, VIPA, invoicing) per stay in our dashboard. This provides insight into the potential for improvement per care pathway based on DRGs ( Diagnosis Related Groups ) and per service.” Rudy Maertens: “The project was put on track by Möbius together with 8 Flemish hospitals, nicely spread in terms of region and type. I dream that we can attach PREMs ( Patient Reported Experience Measures ) and PROMs ( Patient Reported Outcome Measures ) to care pathways: clinical, scientifically validated quality indicators that allow you to track your processes from start to finish, including the outcome.”

Hospitals also get the chance to benchmark themselves. Sarah Misplon: “Also in the context of the upcoming reform of hospital financing, where hospitals will receive a pathology fee per admission, insight into the costs of each care pathway is important. "And we immediately designed the dashboard in both national languages ​​(NL/FR) so that Brussels and Walloon hospitals can also participate."

“The intention is that in the long term all actors (doctors, management, middle management) within the hospital will be able to access this information. We also want to further expand the model. For example, we are now looking at how we can map the entire care pathway,” Sarah Misplon explains. “That is already a lot more specific than one stay, because we also want to link outpatient care, day admissions, etc. to the care pathway. DRGs will then no longer be the point of comparison. Furthermore, we aim to integrate the available quality indicators into the model. The dashboard also ensures that all services/specialisms, each of which has insight into a part of the chain, are better coordinated.”

Profit margin back to the sector
The final aim of the benchmark is to identify and realise potential for improvement. “The ‘profit margin’ achieved in this way must also flow back to the sector itself”, emphasises Rudy Maertens, “the government may not skim off that margin.”

He advocates a management agreement between the sector and the government for the duration of an entire legislative period. With inflation-proof budget agreements. “If necessary, let us formulate a number of improvement goals that we must deliver at the end of that period. In the first instance, the government will then create a sense of security for the sector. With perspective too. At the same time, this creates space for innovation.”

The prerequisite is that legal and financial obstacles disappear. “We are now continuously blocked by inappropriate legislation, hospital standards, labor legislation, financial matters… More freedom is needed to organize the care pathways, certainly if care is organized more and more transmurally,” concludes the CEO of AZ Alma, who wants to make great strides forward. “Steps towards integrated, population-driven care in consultation with primary care players, because that evolution is sorely needed. The network approach across different levels also deserves new impulses. In this way, we can remove the current thresholds.”

Doctors also benefit from this development: “Make your data transparent and the appreciation of doctors will follow automatically. All this fits into a more participatory model, in which doctors try to help realize hospital policy.” Sarah Misplon agrees: “Realizing integration of outcome and return on investment : that is what we want to focus on in the coming period.”

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