Developing a Maternity Services dashboard

I was asked to assist in the development of a Maternity Services dashboard. The first version I saw was a printed copy of a tabular display of performance data for multiple metrics for a single site. There were a lot of metrics, and a lot of scrolling was required to see the full picture. It was developed and maintained by clinical staff and we were asked to build a RAG report (Red, Amber, Green), using the various metric targets to determine performance for the latest period, to help make the whole process quicker and easier to maintain.

A lot of the source data was available to us so we could update the data quickly and easily. I started working on constructing the RAG report in Excel. This was fairly straightforward - lots of conditional formatting. By then, I knew that looking at the data over time, and using the data to calculate the control limits for SPC charts, would provide some added value and would also help sanity check the targets.

I built a dashboard in Excel showing all 28 metrics on one sheet. Where possible, the metrics were displayed as SPC charts with upper and lower control limits. I adopted a RAG approach by colour coding the title cell above each chart. The RAG rating was applied based on the latest data point in relation to each metric's average and control limits. I added the tabular RAG report as a second sheet, to help make it easier to see the underlying chart data.

The reaction was very positive from clinicians and managers. Eventually it progressed beyond Excel to become a fully-fledged analytical product, built in-house by our IT department, and I was involved in the development and implementation. The final version supported multiple areas and allowed aggregated reports across multiple areas. The dual display of SPC charts and supporting tabular data was retained.