Frequently Asked Questions

Effective date: August 15, 2026

How can hospitals get insight into costs and revenues per procedure, pathology and service?

Traditional accounting often provides hospitals with a clear picture at cost centre level but offers less insight into the costs and revenues of individual procedures, pathologies or services.

By combining financial data, billing data and anonymised medical records, the Value4Health Cockpit helps to visualise costs and revenues per stay, procedure, pathology or service.

This enables hospitals to better understand where discrepancies arise, which activities require further investigation and where the key priorities lie.

Hospitals use these insights to move from financial intuition to more evidence-based decision-making.

See how AZ Vesalius analyses costs and revenues using the Value4Health Cockpit

What are the benefits of hospital benchmarking for a hospital?

Benchmarking helps hospitals to put their financial figures into perspective.

A loss-making activity may seem problematic internally but takes on a different meaning when it becomes clear that the same pressure exists elsewhere.

Benchmarking highlights what is structural within the sector and where there is potential for personal improvement. This prevents hasty conclusions and supports more realistic strategic policies.

How does data analysis help to organise an operating room more efficiently?

Data analysis helps hospitals to objectively assess the allocation of time, staff and capacity within the operating room.

With the add-on OK Insights module, hospitals can compare operating room use and unused time (handovers, late starts, early finishes, etc.) with hospitals that have a similar profile.

This shifts the discussion from general impressions to specific questions: where is capacity going unused, which differences can be explained, and where can processes be organised more efficiently?

Discover how OK Insights is helping AZ Groeninge to increase operating room efficiency by 11%

Why is data validation necessary for reliable hospital benchmarking ?

Data validation is necessary to ensure that hospitals are comparing reliable and genuinely comparable figures.

For hospitals, this means that definitions, recording methods and data sources must first be properly aligned. Only then can we be certain that results are interpreted correctly and that the figures being compared are genuinely comparable.

Value4Health supports hospitals in joining the data sources, verifying and interpreting the data, so that the insights from the Value4Health Cockpit are based on a reliable foundation.

Once that foundation is in place, the internal dialogue shifts from “Is this figure correct?” to “What can we learn from this and where can we improve?”

That is the moment when benchmarking really begins to add value.

Discover how UZA and UZ Gent use benchmarking as a basis for dialogue and improvement.

Is the Value4Health Cockpit a monitoring tool or a management tool?

The Value4Health Cockpit is, first and foremost, a management tool.

The dashboard is not intended merely to determine which activities should be discontinued or continued. It helps hospitals to identify trends, structural differences and potential for improvement, and to place figures in the correct context.

That interpretation always remains a matter of substantive judgement. Some healthcare activities are under financial pressure, yet are simultaneously strategically, medically or socially necessary.

The Value4Health Cockpit provides a well-founded basis for asking the right questions, defining priorities more clearly and underpinning improvement programmes.

How does data-driven working help hospitals make better decisions?

Data-driven work helps hospitals base their decisions on objective insights rather than solely on assumptions or financial intuition.

The case of AZ Vesalius shows that data-driven work is not a one-off project, but a gradual cultural change. The Value4Health Cockpit brought greater transparency, more objectivity to discussions and clearer priorities.

Read how the Value4Health Cockpit supports data-driven decision-making in hospitals.

Does a negative financial result mean that a hospital is operating inefficiently?

No. A financial result must always be viewed in the context of case mix, scale, care mandate and funding.

In university hospitals, for example, complex patient care, training, research, reference site functions and funding can have a major impact on costs and revenues.

A negative margin may therefore indicate potential for improvement, but it can also be partly explained by structural factors. Benchmarking helps to make that distinction and interpret results correctly.

Read how UZA and UZ Gent put financial results into context