Top 26 Healthcare KPIs & Quality Metric Examples for 2026 Reporting

What are KPIs in Healthcare?

A Key Performance Indicator is a well-defined performance measure that is used to observe, analyze, and optimize. In healthcare, these are used to transform processes to increase satisfaction for both patients and healthcare providers alike. These metrics are commonly used by care facilities to compare their performance to other care facilities and identify areas for improvement.

Importance of KPIs in Healthcare

Tracking KPIs and metrics like the ones we detail below allows healthcare organizations to improve their operational efficiency, make more informed decisions, and ensure regulatory alignment. This mitigates risks, improving the overall quality of service and outcomes for patients via stronger safety, improved patient experience, more transparency, and better value. Across both levels (business and patient), KPIs convert raw data into action towards ongoing improvement. We recommend using dashboards to monitor information in real-time and drill down into details by unit, shift, or provider. This equips healthcare organizations with clear insights into what’s working and what needs improvement for safer and more responsive care.

Learn more about insightsoftware healthcare reporting dashboards here.

Why Your Business Should Be Using Healthcare-Specific KPIs

In this day and age, healthcare professionals are not only focused on the science behind their area of expertise, but also on how to provide the best possible care. This combination improves hospital performance and supports the effective management of occupancy and costs. To do this, most healthcare facilities have transitioned from paper to digital record-keeping. This reduces the amount of “lost” patient information and makes it easier for care providers to access a patient’s files from one central location.

While this digital revolution makes things easier for healthcare providers and creates a higher quality of care, it can also facilitate a more quantitative analysis of the performance and quality at a hospital or clinic. Patient data can be extracted and transformed into specific healthcare KPIs that can be monitored on a dashboard or provided to executives in the form of reports. This offers more actionable (and up-to-date) insights into patient care, operational efficiency, financial standing, and other areas that are critical for healthcare organizations.

Operational Healthcare KPIs

Operational healthcare KPIs focus on the performance of the healthcare facility. Improving on these metrics will help your hospital or clinic increase operational efficiency, in turn optimizing operational costs and increasing patient satisfaction.

1. Average Hospital Stay

This healthcare KPI tracks the average length of time patients stay in the hospital. While this metric is very useful, it is also very general. To get a clearer picture of what is happening at the hospital, patients should be grouped by their treatment type. For example, recovering from heart surgery will always require a longer stay than treating a sprained wrist or ankle. An average hospital stay by treatment type will enable hospital staff to identify outliers that may be a result of unseen complications.

Equation

Average Hospital Stay = Total Stay Duration / Total Number of Stays

How to Measure

Sum inpatient days from EHR, exclude same-day/observation cases if your definition excludes them, and report monthly or quarterly.

Example

• Total inpatient days = 1,200
• Discharges = 300
• 1,200 / 300 = 4.0 days per stay

2. Bed or Room Turnover

This is a healthcare KPI that tracks how quickly patients are moving in and out of the facility. This metric should be tracked in conjunction with readmission rates to ensure patients are not being discharged prematurely, only to be readmitted again.

Equation
Bed or Room Turnover = Number of Discharges (including deaths) / Number of Beds

How to Measure

Use admission/discharge records and the facility’s staffed bed count (average across period). This KPI is often reported annually as “stays per bed/year.”

Example

• Discharges/year = 3,650
• Staffed beds = 200
• 3,650 / 200 = 18.25 stays/bed/year

3. Medical Equipment Utilization

How many MRI machines does your hospital need? This modern healthcare metric measures the utilization of advanced equipment at your facility and helps control expenses (specialized equipment typically comes with a heavy price tag). On the flip side, equipment being overutilized can result in increased maintenance expenditures and unexpected downtime, leading to treatment delays.

Equation

Utilization (%) = (Actual Equipment Hours Used / Available Equipment Hours) * 100

How to Measure

Capture reservation/usage logs (e.g. MRI scan hours), define “available hours,” monitor by device and modality, and use dashboards to spot under-/over-utilization.

Example

• Used = 1,200 hours
• Available = 2,000 hours
• (1,200 / 2,000) * 100 = 60% utilization rate

4. Average Patient Wait Time

Healthcare facilities are often very busy with long wait times. As the name implies, this metric tracks the average amount of time a patient must wait between checking in and seeing a provider. This is an important metric when it comes to staffing, scheduling, and providing insight into patient satisfaction.

Equation
Patient Wait Time = Total Wait Time / Number of Patients

How to Measure

Timestamp arrival and “seen-by-provider” events in your EHR/ED system and report mean/median and percentiles to capture outliers.

Example

• Total wait minutes = 600
• Patients = 30
• 600 / 30 = 20-minute average wait

Healthcare Financial KPIs

As we alluded to earlier in this healthcare KPI list, the primary objective of a healthcare facility is to provide the highest quality of care possible to patients. However, this is only feasible if the hospital or clinic is able to keep its finances in the black.

Financial healthcare KPIs measure the top and bottom line within your care facility, including costs associated with treatments, claims, and human capital. They play a key role in identifying and reducing inefficiencies. As such, it is strongly recommended to include these in your healthcare reporting solution. Mistakes made here will trickle down into all other areas of your business.

5. Patient Drug Cost Per Stay

This is a modern healthcare metric that is often overlooked by hospital managers. Many drugs have high price tags associated with them. If your staff are not conscious of this, they could end up administering something that the patient cannot afford, or something that their insurance plan does not cover. This could, in turn, result in a higher-than-expected write-down for the hospital if it is not able to collect payment, and also has the potential to affect pharma KPIs.

Equation
Patient Drug Cost per Stay = Total Drug Cost / Number of Stays

How to Measure

Pull pharmacy charges/costs from your finance/pharmacy system, decide whether to use acquisition cost or billed charges, and track by DRG/service line for deeper insight.

Example

• Total drug cost = $48,000
• Stays = 400
• $48,000 / 400 = $120 average drug cost per stay

6. Average Treatment Charge

This KPI shows the average amount a hospital charges for treatment, gauging the effectiveness and efficiency of the treatments provided by your facility. Average treatment charge can be broken down by treatment type or even by treatment category, making it an excellent measure to use when looking to reduce hospital costs.

Equation
Average Treatment Charge = Total Treatment Charges / Number of Treatments

How to Measure

Use your billing system or chargemaster outputs, define “treatment” (e.g. inpatient stay, procedure, outpatient visit), and use dashboards to compare actual vs. expected charges by DRG/CPT.

Example

• Total charges = $250,000
• Treatments = 500
• $250,000 / 500 = $500 average charge

7. Insurance Claim Processing Time

Everyone likes to be paid on time. This healthcare performance metric monitors the amount of time associated with processing insurance claims. Different insurers can take varying amounts of time to issue payment to your facility — it is vital to track this for cash flow and accounts receivable (AR) management.

Equation

Processing Time = Sum of Times From Submission to Final Adjudication / Number of Claims

How to Measure

Pull timestamps from your billing/claims system and segment by payer and error reason.

Example

• Sum of days = 600 across 120 claims
• 600 / 120 = 5 days for average processing

8. Claims Denial Rate

Most healthcare costs are typically paid by insurance providers. However, there are instances in which the insurance provider sees reason not to pay. Typically, institutions should be looking for a claims denial rate below five percent. A low claims-denial rate means that the organization has more time to focus on patient care and spends less time on paperwork.

Equation
Claims-Denial Rate (%) = (Number of Denied Claims / Total Number of Claims) * 100

How to Measure

Use denial-management reports, classify denials by reason code for remedial action, and track both initial denials and final denials after appeal.

Example

• Denied = 30
• Submitted = 500
• (30 / 500) * 100 = 6% denial rate

9. Average Cost per Discharge

Does your care facility track the average costs per patient discharged? This healthcare financial metric can aid hospitals in understanding which areas of care see overspending. It also shows which areas provide the most revenue. Tracking this metric can help hospitals understand long-term spending by care area and adjust care provisions accordingly.

Equation
Average Cost per Discharge = Total Cost of Discharges / Number of Discharges

How to Measure

Finance should allocate overhead and direct costs — use a cost accounting system (e.g. activity-based costing) for accuracy and report by service line/DRG for benchmarking.

Example

• Total inpatient costs = $1,200,000
• Discharges = 400
• $1,200,000 / 400 = $3,000 average cost/discharge

10. Operating Cash Flow

As we mentioned previously, the medical system needs money to operate. There are lots of facilities that receive government subsidies, but at the end of the day, they do need to charge for their services. This healthcare financial metric measures the amount of money that is generated from normal operations at the hospital or clinic.

Equation
Operating Cash Flow = EBIT + Depreciation – Taxes – Change in Working Capital

How to Measure

Use the cash flow statement or internal finance system. For KPI dashboards, show trend and working capital drivers (e.g. AR, inventory, payables).

Example

• EBIT = $200,000
• Depreciation = $50,000
• Taxes = $10,000
• Increase in working capital = $20,000
• $200,000 + $50,000 − $10,000 − $20,000 = $220,000 OCF

11. Accounts Receivable Turnover

Most medical facilities receive payment directly from the patient, an insurance company, or through a government contract. This performance metric is used by management to determine how efficiently the care facility is collecting its receivables (money). A high AR turnover indicates that payments are being collected in a timely manner, while a low turnover indicates collection issues.

Equation
AR Turnover = Net Credit Sales / Average AR

How to Measure

Use revenue and AR balances from finance (average AR = [Opening AR + Closing AR] / 2). Higher turnover means faster collections.

Example

• Net revenue = $2,400,000
• Average AR = $300,000
• $2,400,000 / $300,000 = 8 AR turnover/year

12. Net Profit Margin

At the end of the day, you need to be “in the black.” The net profit, or “bottom line” as people like to call it, is compared to the amount of revenue that your business generates, giving you your net profit margin.

Equation
Net Profit Margin (%) = (Net Income / Net Sales) * 100

How to Measure

Compare vs. budget and peers, using dashboards to show margin by service line.

Example

• Net income = $200,000
• Revenue = $2,000,000
• ($200,000 / $2,000,000) * 100 = 10% net profit margin

How a Healthcare KPI Dashboard Streamlines Reporting

Now that we’ve covered the operational and financial healthcare metrics that you should be monitoring, let’s talk about how you can elegantly and efficiently manage all this data.

Healthcare facilities are busy places. Staff are often run off their feet and struggling to handle all of the work they have. Most medical facilities will make use of a specialized ERP to manage all the data collected from day-to-day operations. However, this doesn’t provide any insights to your staff. At insightsoftware, we have created industry-leading healthcare reporting software that is able to interface with your existing ERP to make KPI tracking and reporting a breeze. Here are some of the benefits of using our healthcare reporting solutions:

• Automated data collection: Manual data collection is inefficient, cumbersome, and prone to mistakes. insightsoftware’s healthcare reporting solutions are able to collect data from your existing ERP and automatically process it for your dashboard.
• Centralized data: Easily accessible and unified patient data is something that healthcare professionals yearn for. Unfortunately, it’s not something that many healthcare systems have. Our healthcare KPI dashboards bring your data to one centralized location so that you can access what you need, when you need it.
• Pre-built KPI templates with ERP interface: Everyone in healthcare is busy – we understand. That is why we have pre-built KPI templates that will automatically extract the data from your ERP.

Reports at your fingertips: All of the heavy lifting has been done for you already. The data has been automatically collected, stored in a central location, and presented in a pre-built dashboard.

If you’re interested in learning more about the benefits of using a healthcare BI software, don’t hesitate to request a free demo, and our team can show you what our software is capable of. In the meantime, let’s get back to the KPIs.

Healthcare Facility KPIs for Monitoring Internal Processes

Internal KPIs in healthcare are built around staff and internal processes. Staff management is a huge part of ensuring your organization’s success. As such, the KPIs in this area revolve around training and safety. This internal healthcare KPI list should be used in conjunction with the operational and financial KPIs mentioned above to get a holistic understanding of how your care facility is operating.

13. Error Rate

This rate measures the number of mistakes made by staff in a medical facility when treating a patient. This is the most important metric for understanding the effectiveness of your staff. These errors are typically broken into categories that include medication type, dosage amount, and type of therapy recommended.

Equation
Error Rate (%) = (Number of Treatment Errors / Total Treatments) * 100

How to Measure

Use incident reports and barcode med administration logs, monitoring by unit and time of day, to direct training.

Example

• Errors = 3
• Med administrations = 1,200
• (3 / 1,200) * 100 = 0.25% error rate

14. Training per Department

There are a lot of times in life when you can make a mistake or not know what you’re doing, and get away with it. Healthcare facilities are not the kind of place to “wing it.” To ensure proper care is given, healthcare facilities should track the amount of training that staff in each department receive.

Equation

Average Training Hours = Total Training Hours / Number of Staff in Department

How to Measure

Pull LMS/training logs and HR headcount, tracking by role (nurses, techs, etc.) and required vs. elective training.

Example

• Training hours = 400
• Staff = 50
• 400 / 50 = 8 hours per person

15. Cancellation Rate

This is a KPI for outpatient clinics as well as hospitals. If a patient misses a scheduled appointment, the result is a wasted resource, as well as a negative effect on the patient’s relationship with the physician or specialist. Measure this value over time so you can address the issues and improve the attendance via reminders or additional calls to patients.

Equation
Cancellation Rate (%) = (Number of Missed Appointments / Total Number of Appointments) * 100

How to Measure

Use a scheduling system to separate patient cancellations, provider cancellations, and administrative causes. KPI dashboards can flag spikes in these areas.

Example

• Cancelled = 25
• Scheduled = 500
• (25 / 500) * 100 = 5% cancellation rate

16. Readmission Rates

This tracks the percentage of patients who are admitted back into the hospital for the same condition or complication they were originally admitted for. Higher hospital readmission rates can indicate that physicians and other care providers are not delivering the proper care to patients, whereas lower hospital readmission rates indicate a strong quality of care. This metric should be used in conjunction with the error rate and training per department to help identify what drives the readmission rates.

Equation
Readmission Rate (%) = (Number of Unplanned Readmissions / Number of Discharges) * 100

How to Measure

Use claims/EHR to link index stays and subsequent admissions. Exclude planned readmissions based on your method (CMS/AHRQ guidance) and risk-adjust when benchmarking.

Example

• Readmissions = 20
• Index discharges = 400
• (20 / 400) * 100 = 5% readmission rate

17. Patient Safety

Does your facility have protocols in place to keep patients safe? This healthcare metric measures the ability of a hospital to deliver quality care to its patients and keep them safe from contracting a new infection or having post-operation complications. It is extremely important to track this metric closely so that you can identify where problems occur, which stage of the process can be improved, and mitigate the chance of outbreaks.

Equation

Patient Safety Event Rate = (Number of Safety Events / Total Patient-Days) * 1,000

How to Measure

Use your incident reporting system and patient-day totals to break out types (falls, pressure injuries), leveraging dashboards to help spot unit-level safety trends.

Example

• Safety events = 5
• Patient-days = 2,500
• (5 / 2,500) * 1,000 = 2 events per 1,000 patient-days

Public Healthcare KPIs

Internal processes are extremely important in the healthcare industry as they can literally be the difference between life and death for a patient. That being said, assessing public health through the use of performance metrics may arguably be more critical to the healthcare system as a whole. This is because a highly educated general public that receives preventative care will be less likely to put strain on the emergency response healthcare system.

18. Childhood Immunization Rate

This healthcare metric measures the number of children who have received immunizations. This is particularly important because it can be equated as a measure of the general population’s herd immunity. Herd immunity is important for care facilities, as it reduces the strain on your care centers and frees up resources to treat other illnesses.

Equation
Childhood Immunization Rate (%) = (Number of Children Immunized / Total Number of Eligible Children) * 100

How to Measure

Use EHR/immunization registry, define the age/cohort and vaccines included, and translate this information to public-health dashboards to track this at county/clinic levels.

Example

• Vaccinated = 900
• Eligible = 1,000
• (900 / 1,000) * 100 = 90% immunization rate

19. Number of Educational Programs

A population is only as smart as the education it receives. This public healthcare metric tracks the number of education programs in each region. Because this is a pretty broad metric, it is often broken down into program types as well as the target audience for each program.

Equation

Count of Educational Programs Held (period)

How to Measure

Track program events in outreach/CME logs and track attendance and evaluation scores for quality.

Example

• Programs over two years = 24
• 24 / 2 = 12 educational healthcare programs per year

Emergency Department KPIs

As we mentioned above, preventative care reduces the burden on the reactive healthcare system. However, that doesn’t mean that we should neglect the reactive portion of the healthcare system. Emergency department healthcare KPIs are metrics focused on patient survival. These can be used to get an understanding of when people decide they need to visit the emergency room, as well as analyze how well your emergency department is operating.

20. Time Between Symptom Onset and Hospitalization

Do people know when they should be seeking medical attention? This healthcare metric measures the time between when a patient begins to experience symptoms and when they are hospitalized. Getting patients into the hospital as quickly as possible is always better. It can help identify and treat conditions before they reach critical stages. Public healthcare officials should use this metric in conjunction with the Number of Educational Programs metric to gauge awareness about health recommendations.

Equation

Avg Time (days) = Sum Time From Symptom Onset to Admission / Number of Patients

How to Measure

Capture symptom-onset timestamps from triage or intake notes where available (often via patient history). This KPI is useful for acute conditions (e.g. stroke, sepsis) to identify delays.

Example

• Total days = 240 across 80 patients
• 240 / 80 = 3 days between symptom onset and hospitalization

21. Patient Mortality Rate

This is a healthcare performance metric that many people try not to think about. It measures the percentage of patients who pass away in a hospital’s care before they can be discharged. This healthcare metric is a strong indicator of a hospital’s ability to stabilize a patient’s condition. The industry average for this metric is around 2%, but care facilities should always aim for a lower percentage.

Equation
Patient Mortality Rate (%) = (Number of Patient Deaths / Total Number of Patients) * 100

How to Measure

Use discharge disposition data and consider risk-adjusted mortality when benchmarking.

Example

• Deaths = 10
• Admissions = 2,000
• (10 / 2,000) * 100 = 0.5% mortality rate

22. Emergency Room Wait Time

The emergency room is a chaotic place, often dealing with the most severe cases. Wait time in this environment measures the amount of time between the arrival of a patient in the ER and the moment they are met by a care provider. This number is similar to the average patient wait time, but is more specific, as its focus is only on the emergency room. Evaluate this metric to know when the rush hours of the day are and the busiest days of the week. This will allow for more effective staff scheduling and could save lives.

Equation
Emergency Room Wait Time = Total Wait Time / Number of ER Patients

How to Measure

Use ED timestamps from registration and provider encounter, then display mean, median, and 90th percentile on dashboards to highlight outliers.

Example

• Total wait minutes = 1,200
• Patients = 60
• 1,200 / 60 = 20 min. average ER wait

Care Quality Metrics in Healthcare

Quality of care metrics are helpful for two different reasons. When a patient receives high-quality care, there is both a lower chance of readmission and a higher rate of patient satisfaction. Here are our top care quality metrics in healthcare:

23. Staff-to-Patient Ratio

The quality of care you receive in a healthcare facility is highly dependent on the amount of attention a patient receives. The easiest way to track this is by comparing the number of staff to the number of patients. This healthcare metric is so critical that the state of California has a legally enforced staff-to-patient ratio to ensure a minimum quality of care.

Equation
Staff-to-Patient Ratio = Number of Staff / Number of Patients (often expressed as 1 : X)

How to Measure

Use staffing rosters and census snapshots by shift, reporting by role (RNs per patient) and by unit.

Example

• Nurses on shift = 15
• Patients = 45
• 15 / 45 = 0.333…
• Ratio = 1 : (1 / 0.333…)
• 1 : 3 nurse-to-patient ratio

24. Patient Follow-Up Rate

Measures the number of patients who receive a follow-up after their stay at the facility. This could be from a physician, nurse, or other staff member asking about the patient’s improvements. This metric often influences the readmission rate, where a higher follow-up rate typically leads to a lower readmission rate.

Equation
Patient Follow-Up Rate (%) = (Number of Follow-Ups / Total Number of Patients) * 100

How to Measure

Track follow-up appointments documented in EHR or outreach logs within your target window (e.g. 7- or 30-day). We recommend segmenting by high-risk cohorts.

Example

• Follow-ups completed = 320
• Eligible discharges = 400
• (320 / 400) * 100 = 80% follow-up rate

25. Hospital-Acquired Infection (HAI) Rate

HAI rate is the percentage of patients who develop an infection while in your healthcare facility (e.g. surgical-site infections, catheter-associated UTIs, CLABSIs, etc.). This metric directly reflects patient safety and care quality, while higher rates directly increase the length of patient stays and costs. Reducing HAI rates should be a top target for quality and outcome improvements.

Equation

HAI Rate (%) = (Number of HAIs / Total Patient-Days) * 100

How to Measure

Use NHSN/CDC surveillance definitions (e.g. infection considered HAI after hospital day 3) to compute SIRs for benchmarking. Use infection control logs and lab-confirmed events.

Example

• Number of HAIs identified: 12
• Total patient-days: 4,800
• (12 / 4,800) * 100 = 0.25% HAI rate

26. Overall Patient Satisfaction

This is a healthcare metric that calculates patient satisfaction. This can be a great marketing tool for your organization if satisfaction is high, but a low satisfaction level could signal a problem with the facility and its services.

Equation

Average score = Sum of Scores / Number of Responses

How to Measure

Pull HCAHPS or internal survey results and present trends by unit/provider. Healthcare patient satisfaction dashboards should show response rates alongside scores.

Example

• Survey scale: 1–5
• Total responses this quarter: 600
• Sum of all numeric scores across responses: 2,520
• 2,520 / 600 = 4.2 average score

Take Your Healthcare Reporting to the Next Level with insightsoftware

While all of these different metrics may seem overwhelming at first, they make up the foundation for improving your healthcare reporting in 2026. At insightsoftware, we’re also here to guide you on your way to creating more useful healthcare dashboards. If you’re looking to upgrade your reporting or decision-making, or have any questions about healthcare dashboard/reporting solutions, get in touch! Our team of reporting specialists are more than happy to help.

Our tools like Jet Reports (Excel-native dashboards), Logi Symphony (embedded analytics), and Simba (data connectivity and access) make it easy for healthcare organizations to take their analytics dashboards to the next level. From seamless and secure real-time data updates via Simba to embedding custom dashboards into other systems like EHRs, patient portals, etc. via Logi Symphony, healthcare reporting processes are streamlined and enhanced with insightful visuals. Get started by requesting a demo today!