Insights Dashboards

Key metrics appear at the top of each dashboard and show you whether the metric is trending up or down.

You can navigate to any metric found within the Insights Dashboards with one click. The purple menu bar across the top of all dashboard pages includes a search and browse menu.

• Click the down arrow to display a full list of the metrics, or type a metric name in the box to search for a specific metric.
  

Charts and tables of your organization's performance over time help you visualize the data and compare performance between the current year and the previous year.

Comprehensive metrics related to areas of performance help you assess performance, including whether the metric is trending up or down. Hover over the information icon to read each metric definition.

Note: For a list of the metrics on each dashboard and their definitions, see Insights Dashboards – Metrics and Definitions on the Success Community.

On the left side of many dashboards, you can see ways to improve fee-for-service revenue, along with a key performance indicator for that action. You can view the data month over month, year over year, or over the trailing 12 months. Click the performance area to display its corresponding dashboard.

Each dashboard provides insights and guidance to help you interpret the performance data and improve performance. Click the Insights button in the right-hand corner to display this information.

For example, if you click the Insights button on the Manage Outstanding A/R dashboard, the following information appears.

Using the filter fields, you can filter data on a dashboard, for example, by insurance reporting category (IRC), department, provider group, specialty, and place of service. To display the filter fields on the dashboard, click Filters at the top right of the dashboard.

The filter options you see depend on the performance area.

Note: Click Clear all to remove all filters that were previously selected.

Click any filter field to display the filter options. Select the filters that you want from the list and click Apply.

The filtered results appear immediately on the dashboard.

The Revenue Overview: More Collections, Faster dashboard displays metrics on revenue, including the latest performance on the leading indicators of revenue, collections, and charges. You can also see quick comparisons over time (for example, year over year, month over month, or trailing 12 months). Use this dashboard to review a high-level overview of revenue performance and learn where you can dig deeper.

From the Revenue Overview: More Collections, Faster dashboard, you can access these dashboards:

• See More Patients
• Perform Higher Value Services
• Improve Payer Contracts
• Increase Collections Yield
• Get Paid Faster

The See More Patients dashboard displays metrics on visit volume and trends, provider counts, and provider workdays. Use this dashboard to uncover potential opportunities to get more patients in the door.

From the See More Patients dashboard, you can access the:

• Improve Schedule Management dashboard

• Promote Patient Self-Scheduling dashboard

The Perform Higher Value Services dashboard displays metrics on the value and complexity of services provided over time. Use this dashboard to understand overall provider productivity and service mix.

The Improve Payer Contracts dashboard displays metrics on payer reimbursement; these metrics are measured by the allowed amount per relative value unit (RVU). athenahealth allows six months to elapse from the service date before capturing the metric. Use this dashboard to analyze your payer mix and contracted rates.

From the Improve Payer Contracts dashboard, you can access these dashboards:

• Perform Higher Value Services
• Increase Collections Yield

The Increase Collections Yield dashboard displays metrics on your organization's collections yield and yield loss. You can view the breakdown of the percentage of total allowable dollars that contribute to yield or yield loss. Two versions of the collections yield and yield loss metrics are available:

• One version is captured at six months from the service date to provide consistent measurement over time.
• One version is current to provide an updated view by service month as of the previous day.

Use this dashboard to understand collection yield and how it can be improved.

From the Increase Collections Yield dashboard, you can access these dashboards:

• Manage Outstanding A/R
• Increase Time of Service Collections
• Analyze Payer Write-off Patterns
• Enforce Contract Payment: Zero Pays

The Get Paid Faster dashboard displays metrics on your Days in Accounts Receivable (DAR). Use this dashboard to understand how long it takes your practice to get paid.

Note: This dashboard includes the Client Days in Accounts Receivable (Client DAR) metric, which was previously available in the Sentinel Metrics Dashboard.

From the Get Paid Faster dashboard, you can access these dashboards:

• Capture Charges for All Services Rendered
• Enter Charges in a Timely Manner
• Manage Outstanding A/R

When are metrics calculated?

 

The Insights Dashboards takes snapshots on the first day of each month to calculate the average daily charges and outstanding A/R values that are used to populate the athenahealth DAR, DAR (91 Days), and Client DAR metrics for the previous completed month on the Get Paid Faster dashboard. The Insights Dashboards continue to refresh these metric values through the 7th day of each month to capture changes made to the previous month's data.

 

The Improve Schedule Management dashboard displays metrics on the rate of checked-in appointments, available appointment opportunities, and more. Use this dashboard to find opportunities to open up more time for patients, fill available appointment slots, and ensure flexible schedule templates.

The Promote Patient Self-Scheduling dashboard displays the daily, weekly, and monthly trends in bookings by channel, including practice scheduling, portal, patient self-scheduling via marketing channels, or other (Partner / Interface). You can view these metrics split out by both new and existing patients.

The Manage Outstanding A/R dashboard displays metrics on historical accounts receivable (A/R) aging trends and current A/R aging trends. Use this dashboard to understand A/R trends so you can minimize the likelihood of revenue becoming uncollectable.

The Increase Time of Service Collections dashboard displays metrics on your organization's pre-visit and in-office collection rate. Use this dashboard to understand current collection trends and identify areas and opportunities to increase patient collections before or at the time of service.

The Analyze Payer Write-off Patterns dashboard displays metrics to help you understand payer yield loss in more detail, including drivers of bad debt and global or other adjustment types. Use this dashboard to understand yield loss due to these adjustments to determine whether you can avoid some of them in the future.

The Enforce Contract Payment: Zero Pays dashboard displays key performance metrics related to your practice's zero-pay volume and recovery rates, such as:

• Total zero-pay charges

• Dollar value of zero-pay charges

• Number of zero-pay resubmissions

• Revenue recovered from resubmissions

Use this dashboard to analyze zero-pay metric trends and top drivers, such as specific payers or procedure codes, and to prioritize your efforts on the zero-pay claims that have the most likelihood of being paid. (You may also consider whether you can prevent similar zero pays in the future.) When you understand the trends, you can use the Zero Pay Review tool to create criteria that correspond to the success criteria you find on the dashboard.

For more information about zero-pay charges, see Zero-Pay Review.

The Enter Charges in a Timely Manner dashboard displays your charge entry lag — that is, how long it takes you to enter charges after a visit occurs. Charge entry lag is defined as the total time elapsed between the date of service and claim creation for all claims, divided by the total number of claims. Use this dashboard to:

• View your metric trends on a monthly, weekly, or daily basis
• Understand which departments, providers, specialties, and places of service are the top drivers of overall practice performance in this area

Best practice: A good target for the charge entry lag metric is 2 days or less.

The Capture Charges for All Services Rendered dashboard displays metrics on your practice's missing slips rate trend. Missing Slips include appointments that were checked-in, but for which charge entry was not accomplished or designated as not requiring charge entry. A missing slip may indicate the provider rendered services but a billing slip has not yet been created for that work. Use this dashboard to:

• Look at the monthly missing slip rate trend, which is calculated by totaling the outstanding missing slips as of the month end and then dividing by the total count of appointments checked-in during the period.
• View the count of missing slips on a monthly, weekly, or daily basis for each appointment date (this data is updated each day).
• Use the interactive visualizations to understand which departments, providers, provider groups, or specialties are the top drivers of overall practice performance in this area.

Best practice: Although the missing slips rate metric can also be accessed by clicking the link to the monthly Practice Performance Reviews on the Performance Reviews page, we recommend accessing this metric in the Insights Dashboards.

Insights Dashboards metrics related to fee-for-service revenue are based on activity reports generated from the Activity Wizard. Typically, these metrics use the date of service, but some Insights Dashboards metrics (for example, Collections Posted and Charges Posted) use the post date, which is the date that charges or collections are entered into athenaOne.

Some fee-for-service metrics are "at 6 months." This means that athenahealth is capturing the metric six months after the date of service. Six months allows for enough time to resubmit claims to payers that require additional details and to receive EOBs and post payments.

On the Sentinel Metrics Dashboard, time-of-service metrics do not account for patient prepayments or prepayment plan down payments.

On the Insights Dashboards, time-of-service metrics account for patient prepayments, and you can see the breakdown of prepayments, in-office collections, and the total collections related to the appointment on the dashboard. Prepayment plan down payments are added to the time-of-service collected and total outstanding collected.

Zero-pay claims or charges that appear on the Insights Dashboards can also be found on the Zero Pay Review page. On the Insights Dashboards, these claims and charges are attributed to the date that the payer adjustment was posted in athenaOne; on the Zero Pay Review page, zero-pay claims and charges are attributed to the creation date of the adjustment in athenaOne.

For the most part, there is no difference between the date that the adjustment was posted and the date that the adjustment was created in athenaOne; therefore, you should not see any difference between metrics on the Insights Dashboards and metrics on the Zero Pay Review page. In the unlikely event that there is a difference, the posted adjustment date is a better reflection of when the adjustment was logged in athenaOne than the creation date.