What this means for your practice
Define the unit being counted before building a dashboard. Separate arrivals, unique administrative cases and completed handovers so repeated correspondence does not inflate totals.
An example to discuss with your team
Reopen a completed fictional case; verify the report follows the agreed counting rule.
What to ask before you choose
Ask the supplier to walk through an example containing a new referral, an extra attachment, a duplicate submission and a reopened case. The report should show how each affects arrivals, active cases and completed handovers. Agree which date is used for the reporting period so month-end figures remain understandable when work continues into the next month.
Choose the count that matches the question
If the question is how many new cases arrived, follow the practice's agreed definition of a new case. If the question is how much correspondence staff handled, messages may be a useful separate count. Presenting both with clear labels is more informative than expecting one total to describe every part of the workload.
Take a small, authorised sample and explain how each example contributes to the report. Include a case opened last month, an extra document received this month and a case reopened after an earlier handover. Agree how changes to the counting rules will be explained in later comparisons. A revised definition can change a total even when the underlying workload has not changed. When numbers are challenged, the team should be able to trace the calculation to the relevant records and explain its limits without asking a developer to reconstruct the report.
How to check the result
Track the number of reporting adjustments caused by inconsistent definitions.
Turn reading into a next step
Your action checklist
Work through these checks with your team or supplier. Tick the ones you have resolved and leave unknowns open.
Record what you know, what is still missing and the answer you need from your team or supplier.
Use project decisions only, without personal, patient or confidential details. Entries stay in this page and are not submitted to Kay & Co. Copy or download before leaving; this page does not save your notes.
Further reading
These sources provide background for the topic. The practice examples and checklist are illustrative planning suggestions from Kay & Co.
Related guides
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