Transplant Quality Dashboard measures what matters

Julie Rodriguez knows firsthand how challenging it can be to staff a transplant quality team. As Transplant Quality and Patient Safety Manager at Intermountain Transplant Services, she kept hearing the same concern echoed by peers across the country: quality teams were structured and used differently from one transplant center to another. “There was a lot of chatter on the transplant listserv regarding how transplant teams are being used [at different centers],” Rodriguez says.

A shared challenge across transplant centers

Without a clear picture of how other transplant programs operated, it was difficult to know whether a program was appropriately staffed, or to advocate for change.

Rodriguez teamed up with colleagues from the Organ Donation and Transplantation Alliance’s Transplant Quality Staffing Collaborative to address this gap. The Collaborative partnered with UNOS to design a survey that captures how transplant quality teams are staffed and how they operate.

Turning survey results into actionable data

UNOS invited all quality teams to complete the Transplant Quality Staffing Survey. Participating centers can access the results through a new interactive Transplant Quality Dashboard, designed to help transplant programs benchmark their staffing models against peers across the country.

Rodriguez says the survey and dashboard have changed how her team evaluates staffing, identifies gaps and talks with leadership about the resources they need to support their program. “It gives you some good tools to go to your leadership and say, ‘We need to grow our quality program based on how the quality teams are being used throughout the nation for transplant centers our size or larger,'” Rodriguez says. “It helps me to have those crucial conversations with leadership.”

Setting goals and tracking progress

Benchmarking data also has helped Intermountain set clearer goals and track progress. Being able to benchmark against other transplant centers is critical, Rodriguez says. “If we didn’t have that data … It’s hard to have a goal.” One of Rodriguez’s favorite features of the dashboard is how easy it is to use the visuals. Charts and graphics can be downloaded and dropped directly into presentations, making it simple to communicate key points. “A picture is worth 1,000 words,” she says. “We can go in and snip this data and then put it into our PowerPoints to be able to drive home a particular point or to explain why we need to change a metric.” Rodriguez credits UNOS Tools for helping Intermountain’s transplant program to grow. “When you know that you’re being benchmarked against programs that you [admire], I think that’s helped us extensively,” she says. “Our kidney program is now fourth in the nation, and our liver program is third. So, we’re doing something right and we’re using the UNOS Tools to be able to help us to create those goals for our team.”