Trusted Provider Scorecards Improve Operational Visibility

EPR used trusted analytics to build provider scorecards and improve visibility into operational performance.

Background

As a busy independent emergency medicine practice, Emergency Physicians of the Rockies (EPR) staffs four hospital emergency rooms and two freestanding emergency departments across the northern region of Colorado.

Challenges

To manage more than 100 providers, EPR needed actionable data to measure performance and drive process improvement. They struggled with the hospital-created database that had limited data and did not reliably answer many questions to verify its efficacy and identify root causes. The lack of billing data integration, in particular, made the system difficult to use as a productivity-boosting tool.

“We lacked the drill-down capability to perform ongoing high-level analyses at a level our medical directors were comfortable with,” states Betsy Coldren, Chief Operating Officer at EPR.

Solution: Emergency Medicine Performance Analytics

In response, they turned to d2i’s trusted analytics solutions and long-standing emergency medicine experience as an alternative. EPR quickly found that d2i data was more reliable, useful, and actionable than their previous solution.

Coldren noted, “d2i has been able to refine findings from other groups’ experiences and has taken that expertise to deliver the reporting that is exactly what we were trying to get. We’ve also refined some of the reporting they already have, too, and it’s a win.”

Ken Patrick, CEO of EPR, adds:

You can justify d2i based on improving demand capacity for a single shift, and d2i provides so much more.

In one case, EPR relies on d2i to help generate a staffing and volume report that examines each of its emergency departments in depth.

Whether it’s acuity, staffing, volume, even by hour of the day, or day of the week, and provider productivity, we can use their reports for different ways of looking at data,” Coldren explained.

EPR and d2i are currently partnering to develop more detailed reporting that will help EPR trend if providers are appropriately picking up patients based on the Emergency Severity Index (ESI). This will help EPR determine if any of its providers could benefit from additional education. Eventually, this and other analytics from d2i will help EPR develop a “scorecard” system for its providers.

Results: Enabling Data-Driven Performance Culture at Scale

1. Empowering Provider-Level Insight
“We are starting to develop a scorecard for individual providers, looking at how we can focus some of the reporting to hone in on specific areas,” Coldren said. “What we’re doing now is getting people comfortable that the data is valid and they can reliably trust it.”

2. Informing Operational Decisions with Confidence
Medical directors who previously lacked meaningful insight into staffing patterns or throughput bottlenecks are now leveraging d2i data to guide scheduling, resource allocation, and process adjustments. The ability to segment performance by hour, day, acuity, or provider is giving directors the context they need to optimize care delivery.

3. Saving Time and Increasing Strategic Agility
The accessibility and clarity of d2i’s reporting tools are freeing up leadership bandwidth, allowing medical directors and operational leaders to spend less time pulling reports and more time acting on them. Coldren noted that some medical directors are “really into the data,” using it to proactively manage departmental priorities and support frontline decision-making.

Overall, Coldren appreciates the close working partnership between EPR and d2i, which helps both organizations advance the use of data analytics for emergency medicine. The customizability of d2i data, in particular, has been a breakthrough for EPR.

They can just take the reporting layer they have and add another layer on for us. It’s enhanced what they already had, and if other d2i clients find it helpful, too, that’s great.

Ready to strengthen your group’s position with reliable, actionable analytics? Let d2i show you how better data leads to better performance. Schedule a demo today.