“When professional staffing firm General Dynamics recruited me, they described a client desperate to replace its outgoing clinical informatics specialist with a professional whose skill set included statistical expertise. Through the grapevine, it had been reported to me that there had never been a true analyst in that role. The reports proved accurate when I examined the bar charts that comprised the Monthly HEDIS Report, the department’s signature deliverable, to the senior Naval officers assigned to govern its 25 hospitals domestically and abroad.”
“The primary data visuals affronted basic principles of communication as well as intellectual and aesthetic sensibilities. The cacophony of colors (one for each of the 18 HEDIS measures) and twisted mess of uneven lines separating segments within each bar served more to conceal than communicate, overwhelming and offending the senses — and the mind.”
“How do I even begin to explain this? …”
“Before I explain how I reimagined the data, which itself will sound convoluted, allow me to make the overriding point of this piece: the chaotic visual was no accident…” Read the full article here.
Source: Navy Heels: Armed Services Defense Health Agency Has Habit of Averting Accountability – By Matthew Giarmo, July 13, 2019. LinkedIn.
