Today’s nurse managers are juggling more than ever, and many are feeling the strain. But there’s one area of frustration that could be easily improved with a single tool that’s easy to implement and even easier to use.
Let’s look at some of the common complaints nurse managers have when it comes to tracking down information—and how a good healthcare-based data catalog could solve them.
#1: “It takes too long to get the reports I need.”
Most nurse managers have to submit a ticket to IT every time they need a report. Whether they’re looking for the last three years’ of patient-satisfaction survey results, last month’s safety incidents, or last week’s overtime hours, it can take days—or longer—to get what they need, and not for lack of trying.
The problem is that most healthcare data teams are just as swamped as the nurses, and everyone is scrambling to keep up.
How a healthcare data catalog could help:
Ironically, in many cases, the reports a nurse manager needs might not even have to be created. Why? Because it’s entirely possible someone else in the organization may have already created a report on the patient satisfaction survey —but it’s been lost to a black hole of documents that no one else can see.
With a good healthcare-focused data catalog in place, like Compendium, the nurse manager could simply search for the kind of answers they’re looking for and might discover they already have access to the reports they need, and both departments would gain back time and productivity.
#2: “My reports don’t match what other teams have.”
There’s nothing more confounding for a nurse manager than showing up to a meeting with a report like “Nursing Cost per Patient Day” and finding out it doesn’t match the numbers the finance team has pulled. Where is the discrepancy happening? Whose report is correct? Why are they different? Who’s going to spend the time investigating the problem?
No nurse manager has time for this. (And neither does finance.)
How a healthcare data catalog could help:
Often a discrepancy in reports is caused because different metrics were used—or the metrics were defined differently. For example, the nurse manager’s report might have included only full-time employees, while finance’s included temporary nurses who filled in here and there. A data catalog like Compendium would clear up this confusion instantly—either by providing the metric definitions or, at the very least, by indicating who originally created each report, so they can be contacted to clarify.
#3: “I don’t know what I don’t know.”
Most nurse managers are aware that there’s probably more information out there that would be helpful to their work. They know that other nurse managers in their organization are probably already leveraging insights that would be valuable. But they don’t know what that information might be, they don’t know how to find it, and they don’t have time to ask around for it.
How a healthcare data catalog could help:
Think of a data catalog like the home page on your Netflix account. Without that home screen, which lets you browse for shows by category, read brief descriptions, and see recommendations that fit your viewing history, you might never have known about Squid Game or Tiger King.
A good healthcare data catalog can do the same for nurse managers. It serves up relevant information and reports that could help them do their work faster and better.
If your organization needs a low-investment, high-impact way to make work easier for your nurse managers, it’s time to look at Compendium—the only data catalog that’s built by healthcare experts for healthcare professionals. Discover how to create a self-serve data culture with minimal effort and maximum results.
