Presentation (CTI)

OBJECTIVES: To assess whether an interactive dashboard could support Appropriate and Value-Based Care in community-acquired pneumonia by enabling benchmarking, identifying unwarranted practice variation, and highlighting opportunities to optimize resource utilization without compromising care quality.
METHODS: We compared the conventional workflow of extracting data from multiple source systems into spreadsheets with an interactive Tableau dashboard introduced in January 2025. The dashboard was used to evaluate community-acquired pneumonia across hospitals, with analyses covering patient age and complexity, case volume, costs, bill size, quality indicators, average length of stay, and temporal trends in resource utilisation. Resource use was further examined by category, quantity per case, and unit price across time periods.
RESULTS: The dashboard reduced analytic turnaround time from as long as eight working days to one day, enabling near real-time benchmarking. Hospitals A and B had broadly comparable patient age and complexity profiles; however, Hospital A demonstrated an opportunity to reduce average length of stay by approximately one day through closer alignment of care pathways. Although Hospital A recorded more outlier cases, its median bill size was lower despite similar mean bill sizes, suggesting differences in case mix and service delivery that warrant further evaluation. The dashboard also detected a COVID-19-associated increase in length of stay and bill size in 2021, driven largely by higher drug utilization, with metrics returning to pre-pandemic levels by 2024. Additional variation was observed in imaging utilization and laboratory testing, including glucose measurement and respiratory multiplex ordering.
CONCLUSIONS: An interactive dashboard can substantially improve analytic efficiency, enhance transparency in benchmarking, and rapidly detect unwarranted variation in the care of patients with community-acquired pneumonia. By enabling timely review of length of stay, imaging, laboratory testing, and medication use, it supports targeted service redesign and more efficient resource allocation. This approach may strengthen continuous learning and advance more consistent, value-based, patient-centered care.