TY - JOUR T1 - ‘Show me the data!’ Using time series to display performance data for hospital boards JF - BMJ Quality & Safety JO - BMJ Qual Saf SP - 69 LP - 72 DO - 10.1136/bmjqs-2022-014999 VL - 32 IS - 2 AU - Christine Soong AU - Chaim M. Bell AU - Paula Blackstien-Hirsch Y1 - 2023/02/01 UR - http://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/32/2/69.abstract N2 - Core to the role of a hospital board is establishing organisational strategy and multi-year priorities, ensuring processes are in place for risk prevention and mitigation, and overseeing progress on strategic outcomes relevant to multiple quality domains. This role is distinct from that of the hospital management team (comprised of managers and clinical and operational leaders) that is responsible for daily operations and implementing the hospital’s strategic plan.1 While senior executives such as Chief Executive Officers may sit on both boards and management teams in some countries (such as the UK and Canada), the roles of boards and management teams differ. For example, boards focus on long-term strategic planning, while management focuses on day-to-day operations. To support these different roles, hospital boards and management teams both need access to data in graphic formats that help to differentiate random variation from significant changes, although required elements may differ. Hospital management should have access to and be familiar with performance metrics to make day-to-day decisions to ensure high quality of care in addition to regular (eg, monthly) review of performance metrics linked to strategic priorities to inform them about impact on outcomes over time. Examples of performance outcomes include metrics such as rates of hospital acquired infections, falls, medication adverse events, readmissions and patient experience measures. In addition to outcome measures, hospital management teams also require access to process measures which support problem solving on implementation of quality and safety strategies linked to strategic outcomes.Hospital boards generally focus attention on measures to answer questions about risk: How safe are we now? If striving to be safer in a particular area such as sepsis or pressure injuries, are we moving in the right direction, and are we at target? If not, what are we doing to achieve target performance? Is the observed … ER -