Today, I will tell you the story of how one of the most important projects in my portfolio, the IPM, was born. When I started working at the Hospital para el Niño Poblano, the administrative department needed someone to manage data and statistics. In my first interview, I was informed that during an audit, an authority told the directors that the hospital had a goldmine of information and data, but it was not being utilized efficiently. There was no one to properly process the data. This need presented me with the opportunity to join the Statistics department as the person responsible for data analysis and performance indicators calculation. For the first time, I had the formal opportunity to work in what I am passionate about.
Shortly after I joined, the directors began to suspect that some doctors at the hospital were deliberately overloading their consultation schedules. This resulted in patients being offered appointment dates more than 100 or 150 days later, which could have severe consequences for their health. The directors decided to confront one of these doctors in a multidisciplinary meeting, as he was the only specialist in his field within the hospital and his malpractice was concerning.
During the meeting, the director allowed the doctor to present and defend his case. However, upon detecting inconsistencies in his account, the director called on me to use data analysis to confront the doctor and enable an informed decision. By presenting the detected pattern in the number of patients missing their appointments, among other relevant data, the doctor could not refute the evidence and ended up admitting his fault. He accepted the director and authorities’ invitation to increase his productivity and not deliberately overload his schedule, thus allowing patients who genuinely needed appointments to be seen.
After this successful meeting, I went to the administration department to report what had happened. At that moment, a distressed mother arrived with her daughter to ask if an urgent appointment could be scheduled with the same doctor. Thanks to the data analysis and tools I applied, the staff was able to reassure her that the doctor’s schedule was being freed up to see the girl that same day.
It is very gratifying to think that, thanks to data analysis, I was able to ensure that a girl received proper care and improved her serious health condition that day.
This is how the IPM was born, and it is here to stay. Now, with all the improvements and additional functions implemented over the past year, this set of dashboards perfectly evaluates all medical staff regarding their activities reported within the hospital system.
