Dashboards and Reports Are Complementary Tools for Compliance
Question: I’m about to take on compliance officer duties in my organization, and I am trying to weigh the advantages of using a dashboard instead of just writing/compiling reports. Are dashboards worth the effort to procure? Revenue Cycle Insider Subscriber Answer: Debi Behunin, RN, CPC, addressed this in her AAPC HEALTHCON 2026 presentation “Getting Acquainted with Dashboards and Reports,” saying that there are benefits and constraints for relying on reports alone to measure and keep tabs on a practice’s metrics. The value of a report is that it gives you the same information every time, she said. “They’re really good for tracking specific metrics over time.” They’re ideal for monitoring and documenting known metrics, so if you have a known issue you want to track, and you want to make sure you’re consistent, you use a report, she said. She noted that reports are inflexible; if something changes, you have to change the report. Reports also don’t answer questions that the report wasn’t initially designed to answer — scope and timelines are, by design, major limitations. A dashboard, however, can show a variety of metrics, in real time or nearly real time, in one place, providing a broader overview of data, she explained. So while a dashboard may require more or different technology, like a third-party vendor, to set up and run, they can give you more information at a glance, possibly helping you catch issues across the practice as they become problematic, rather than doing a deeper dive into one specific element. Rachel Dorrell, MA, MS, CPC-A, CPPM, Production Editor, AAPC
