Section 21.4: Reporting Workbench & Radar Dashboards

21.4.1 The “Why”: Data is the Lifeblood of Modern Pharmacy

As a pharmacist, you operate in a world saturated with data. Lab values, patient weights, administration times, dispensing logs, billing codes—every action you take both consumes and generates vast amounts of information. In a traditional practice, much of this data is either ephemeral or locked away in paper logs and inaccessible files. Answering a simple question like, “How many of our patients on warfarin had a subtherapeutic INR last month?” could be a monumental project involving weeks of manual chart reviews.

The implementation of an EHR like Epic changes the entire paradigm. Suddenly, every one of these data points is captured, stored, and structured in the Chronicles database. The data is all there. The challenge is no longer one of collection, but of extraction, interpretation, and visualization. This is where you, the pharmacy informatics analyst, transition from being a system builder to a data strategist and storyteller.

Epic provides two primary tools for this purpose. Reporting Workbench is your powerful query tool, the digital equivalent of a high-speed sorting machine that can sift through millions of patient records in seconds to find exactly the information you need. It is the key that unlocks the data vault. Radar Dashboards are your canvas, the executive summary, the at-a-glance view that transforms raw data from your reports into meaningful, actionable insights for pharmacy leadership, quality improvement committees, and frontline staff.

Mastering these tools is what elevates your role from a technical specialist to a strategic partner in the organization. You will be the one to provide the data that justifies a new clinical service, identifies a critical safety gap, monitors the financial impact of a new high-cost drug, or tracks compliance with a crucial quality metric. The builds you create in Willow, the rules you write for CDS—all of your work culminates here, where the impact of those efforts is measured and made visible. Learning to effectively report on the system you help manage is the final, essential skill in becoming a truly effective informatics pharmacist.

Part 1: Masterclass on Reporting Workbench (`RWB`)

Reporting Workbench is Epic’s primary tool for creating real-time, operational reports. It is designed to query the live, transactional Chronicles database. This is its greatest strength and its most important limitation. It is perfect for answering questions about what is happening in your hospital *right now* (e.g., “Which patients have unverified orders?”). It is not designed for massive, multi-year retrospective analyses, as these large queries can impact the performance of the live system. For that, Epic has other tools like Clarity and Caboodle which use a separate, mirrored copy of the database.

As a pharmacy analyst, Reporting Workbench will be one of your most frequently used tools. You will use it to build patient lists, monitor quality initiatives, create audits, and troubleshoot system issues.

The Anatomy of a Reporting Workbench Report

Building a report is a structured process. The report editor is organized into a series of tabs, each controlling a different aspect of the query. Understanding the function of each tab is the key to building effective reports.

Masterclass on Report Components

Component Tab	Core Function	Analogy: The Smart Sorter	Key Configuration Details
Criteria	The “WHERE” clause of your query. This is where you define the filters to narrow down your results from millions of records to just the ones you need.	These are the filter settings on your smart sorter (e.g., “Priority is STAT”).	You will add one or more criteria by selecting a property (e.g., Patient Location), an operator (e.g., equals), and a value (e.g., “Emergency Department”). You can combine multiple criteria with AND/OR logic.
Display	The “SELECT” clause of your query. This determines what columns of information will appear in your final report.	This is the “Show me these details” part of your sorting rule.	You will add columns one by one. You can add properties from your primary template (e.g., Patient Name) or “jump” to related records to pull in other data (e.g., jump from the patient record to their latest Creatinine lab result).
Sort	Determines the default order in which the results will be displayed.	Arranging the sorted mail by destination floor, then by room number.	You can add multiple levels of sorting. For example, you could sort first by Patient Location (so all the ICU patients are grouped together), and then by Patient Name alphabetically within each location.
Prompts	Creates interactive filters that the person running the report can use.	Instead of a fixed rule, the sorter asks you, “Which department’s mail are we sorting today?”	Prompts are essential for making your reports flexible and reusable. Instead of building a separate report for each hospital unit, you can build one report with a prompt that asks the user, “Which unit would you like to run this for?”

Step-by-Step Report Build: “Patients with Critical Lab – High Potassium”

Let’s build a clinically critical safety report. The goal is to create a real-time list of all admitted patients who currently have a potassium level greater than 5.5 mEq/L, so a pharmacist can immediately review their profile for offending medications and notify the provider.

Step 1: General Settings and Template Selection

• New Report Name: PHARMACY - SAFETY - HYPERKALEMIA ALERT
• Description: “Shows all current inpatients with a potassium lab result > 5.5 mEq/L within the last 24 hours.”
• Template Selection: Our primary focus is the patient. We will choose the Patients template.

Step 2: Configuring the Criteria Tab

We need to precisely define the group of patients we’re interested in.

• Criterion 1: The Patient must be currently admitted.
  • Property: Patient Status
  • Operator: equals
  • Value: Hospital Inpatient
• Criterion 2: The Patient must have had a recent high potassium result.
  • Property: Lab Results (This will open a sub-editor for lab criteria).
    • Lab Test: Search for and select “Potassium.”
    • Result Value: Operator is greater than, Value 5.5.
    • Time Frame: Look back 24 hours from the current time.

Step 3: Configuring the Display Tab

We need to show the pharmacist clinically relevant information to help them triage these patients quickly.

• Column 1: Patient Name
• Column 2: Patient Location (Room/Bed)
• Column 3: MRN
• Column 4: Latest Potassium Result (Jump to Labs, select Potassium, specify “Last Value”).
• Column 5: Potassium Result Time (From the same lab result).
• Column 6: Latest Serum Creatinine Result (A second jump to labs to provide context on renal function).
• Column 7: Active ACEi/ARB/K-sparing Diuretic Orders (A complex column where you jump to active meds and filter for specific drug classes).
• Column 8: Primary Provider Name (So the pharmacist knows who to contact).

Step 4: Saving and Sharing the Report

Once saved, this report becomes a powerful safety tool. You can add it to a shared folder in the RWB library for all pharmacists to access. They can run it on-demand throughout their shift to proactively identify and intervene on patients at risk for severe hyperkalemia.

Part 2: Masterclass on Radar Dashboards

While Reporting Workbench is excellent for generating lists and finding specific data, it’s not ideal for at-a-glance visualization or for non-technical users like managers and directors. For this, we use Radar. Radar is Epic’s dashboarding tool and information portal. For many users, their Radar dashboard is the first thing they see when they log into Epic.

As an analyst, you will use Radar to assemble reports, metrics, and graphs into a single, consolidated view tailored to a specific audience (e.g., a Staff Pharmacist Dashboard, a Manager Dashboard, a Director Dashboard). Your job is to surface the most important information, eliminating the need for users to hunt for it themselves.

The Anatomy of a Radar Dashboard

A dashboard is a container that you can fill with different “components” or “widgets.” You will build your dashboards in the main Radar configuration activity and then assign them to users via Dashboard Profiles (`LDP` records).

Component Type	Function	Analogy: The Live Tracking System	How It’s Powered
Metric	Displays a single, key number. Often with color-coding (e.g., green, yellow, red) to indicate status.	The urgent alert box: “Unverified STATs > 15 min.”	A Metric is powered by a Reporting Workbench report that is designed to return only a count of rows. The number displayed is the total number of results from the report.
Report	Embeds the full, detailed results of a Reporting Workbench report directly onto the dashboard.	The “Action List” showing the details of the delayed STAT orders.	You directly link this component to a saved Reporting Workbench report. The component will display the columns you configured in the report itself.
Graph	Creates a visual representation of data over time, such as a bar chart, line chart, or pie chart.	The bar chart showing “Hourly Verification Volume.”	Graphs are also powered by Reporting Workbench reports. You design a report that returns the data, and then use the graph component’s settings to define the axes, chart type, and appearance.
Links	Provides one-click shortcuts to other activities within Epic or to external websites.	The quick-links to the policy & procedure manual or the ISMP website.	You manually configure these links with the desired destination URL or activity definition.

Step-by-Step Dashboard Build: “The Pharmacy Manager’s Daily Operations Dashboard”

Let’s build a dashboard for a pharmacy manager who needs a high-level, at-a-glance view of the department’s key operational and financial metrics at the start of their day.

Step 1: Create a New Dashboard Profile (`LDP`)

First, you create the dashboard container itself. You’d give it a name like `PHARMACY – MANAGER DAILY OPS` and define its layout (e.g., three columns).

Step 2: Add Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Metrics

We’ll add a “KPI bar” across the top of the dashboard with four key metrics. Each requires a backing RWB report that calculates the count.

• Metric 1: “Unverified Orders – Total”
  • Powered by: A report counting all medication orders with a status of “Unverified.”
  • Configuration: Thresholds set to turn yellow when > 50, and red when > 100.
• Metric 2: “Dispensing – Missing Doses”
  • Powered by: A report counting all active medication orders flagged as having a “missing dose” from a nursing request.
  • Configuration: Thresholds set to turn yellow when > 10, and red when > 25.
• Metric 3: “Financial – High-Cost Unbilled Meds”
  • Powered by: A report counting dispensed high-cost drugs from the last 24 hours that have not yet had a charge drop.
  • Configuration: Thresholds set to turn red if the count is > 0, as this represents potential lost revenue.
• Metric 4: “Safety – Open Interventions”
  • Powered by: A report counting pharmacist interventions that have been documented but not yet closed.
  • Configuration: Informational only (no color thresholds).

Step 3: Add Actionable Report Lists

Below the metrics, we will place lists that the manager can use to direct staff attention.

• Column 1: Embed a report showing “Unverified Orders by Queue,” giving the manager a quick view of where the biggest backlogs are.
• Column 2: Embed our `PHARMACY – SAFETY – HYPERKALEMIA ALERT` report so the manager has visibility into active, high-risk patients.
• Column 3: Embed the “High-Cost Unbilled Meds” report so the manager can see the specific drugs and patients and assign someone to investigate the billing errors.

Step 4: Add a Graph for Trend Analysis

We’ll add a financial graph to help the manager track drug spend.

• Graph Component: “Daily Drug Spend – Top 5 Therapeutic Classes”
  • Powered by: A complex RWB report that sums the acquisition cost of all drugs dispensed yesterday, grouped by their therapeutic class.
  • Configuration: Set up as a pie chart. This gives the manager a powerful, immediate visualization of where their money is going.

Step 5: Assigning the Dashboard

Once the dashboard is built and validated with the pharmacy director, you would assign the `PHARMACY – MANAGER DAILY OPS` profile to the security class for all pharmacy managers. This becomes their new, customized landing page in Epic, designed specifically to give them the operational intelligence they need to run their department effectively.