Visualization Literacy and Decision-making in Healthcare

The ability of workers in the healthcare industry to analyze, interpret and communicate with health data is critical to decision-making and impacts both health and business outcomes. Optimal decision-making requires having real-time access to information that provides useful insights and that lends itself to collaborative decision-making. Data visualizations have the potential to facilitate decision-making in healthcare when presented as a dashboard. However, dashboards have shown varying results in both effectiveness and adoption. Data or graphical literacy challenges experienced by health team members could complicate strategic decision-making through an inability to correctly interpret or summarize the information presented in a dashboard. One assumption is that visualization literacy and its impact on how people process health data visualizations play a part in the effective interpretation of information to support decision-making. To determine the impact of visualization literacy on the process of decision-making in a healthcare setting, we first developed and deployed a dashboard designed to provide important information for decision-makers on a clinical trial management team. We engaged Project Managers and Medical Managers in the project as key decision-makers on the team. The dashboard was integrated into the normal workflow of a clinical trial management team and designated as the tool used in the workflow to report on the trial status within the organization. Next, we administered a series of assessments to the key decision-makers. The assessments were designed to evaluate numeracy, visualization literacy, and the impact of both on the decision-making ability of participants. Decision-making was assessed using a common workflow scenario supported by visualizations from the deployed dashboard. Additionally, we were interested in exploring indicators related to job satisfaction that was collected during the project period through a formal engagement survey. We performed a general linear model to assess the relationship between the assessments and decision-making. Results of our project show a significant and clear relationship between visualization literacy and decision-making ability and an insignificant relationship between numeracy and decision-making ability. Job satisfaction scores for the participant group obtained through the engagement survey suggest favorable results. However, areas of opportunity for improvement illuminated through the survey included better tools and additional resources to support the execution of tasks, a better workload balance, and improvements in collaboration across departments and functions. The results of this project contribute to the informatics discipline by demonstrating that information obtained from data visualizations produced through the aggregation of multiple sources of data can be effective decision-support tools if they are designed with user skills and abilities in mind. The results of the project suggest an opportunity to develop more useful and usable tools to improve job satisfaction as well as organizational business objectives related to workforce staffing, job competencies, and learning and development initiatives

New Perspectives on Transforming States' Health and Human Services: Practical Commentaries on the First Year of the Work Support Strategies Initiative

Millions of low-income working families in America today are struggling to make ends meet. While working hard, often in low-wage jobs, many of these families are living close to the edge of hardship and have little or no resources to fall back on in case of emergencies. Public benefit programs can make a huge difference in the well-being of these working families, providing help with food, child care, and health insurance expenses. These programs help families address immediate needs and weather short-term crises, such as repairing a car needed to get to work or dealing with an unexpected health problem. They can make it possible for families to hold onto their jobs in these emergencies, stabilizing employment and keeping families from falling further into poverty. Yet many families that are eligible for public benefit programs do not participate. Although the recession and its aftermath led to unprecedented increases in receipt of nutrition assistance through the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the latest data (from 2010) show that only 65 percent of the eligible working poor are participating. Similarly, of all children eligible for public health insurance coverage through Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program, only 86 percent are participating. The participation rate for public health insurance for parents is only 66 percent. And, these participation rates vary widely across states.The Work Support Strategies, or WSS, Initiative is motivated by the value public benefit programs can provide to working families and the belief that the states and localities administering these programs can improve how eligible families access and retain these benefits. In the first year of the demonstration, nine states took on the challenge of streamlining, integrating, and improving the provision of work support benefits through their SNAP, Medicaid, and child care programs (and, in some states, additional programs such as heating assistance and cash welfare). While most states hope their efforts will also reduce burden on caseworkers and administrative costs in these systems, all are motivated to improve the lives of the families they serve