The Importance of Clinical Scorecards

Scorecards are used to measure performance and balance them altogether to achieve organizational goals. Many companies have adapted this business strategy to be able to set a direction for their organizations in terms of target metrics and financial goals. A clinical scorecard, though, is still not as widely used today as it is in many industries. However, many hospitals and clinical institutions are beginning to see its importance to measure clinical effectiveness and clinical performance.In many organizations related to healthcare across the globe, the balanced scorecard is what seems to be favored to measure the different components of clinical performance assessment. In the Business Process Outsourcing industry, there is a body or organization that audits these companies and tells them what needs to be improved or they will not be accredited. The same goes through educational institutions and medical facilities. For medical institutions, there are third party accrediting agencies that tell universities and state colleges what standards of education to achieve. For the medical world, this body is called Joint Commission International Accreditation. This body dictates what medical organizations must comply with in terms of quality of service and management of the facilities including benchmarking for improvement. Thus, the scorecard for medical facilities was born.Among the many items that need focus are accuracy of diagnosis, prevention of infections, safety of patients, technology, correct usage of blood, accuracy of prescriptions, and many more. Accordingly, there is a total of 35 key performance indicators in the scorecard used for medical facilities. These 35 metrics are then categorized into four major groupings that comprise the balanced scorecard.The four categories are:1. Clinical Risk and Patient Safety2. Clinical Appropriateness and Clinical Efficiency3. Nosocomial Infections4. Clinical EffectivenessAccording to the current standards, this data sheet should be updated as regularly as one would in other industries. Ideally, this should be updated monthly as businesses are assessed every month in terms financial goals against what is actually achieved. This is what makes up a balanced scorecard for clinical establishments such as hospitals. With a data driven action, one cannot go wrong. If the data presented in the scorecards are accurate, one will easily be able to determine the pain points of any given organization and thus give them a clear idea what to prioritize in terms of projects for development.People will realize how it is important to make changes in current processes to streamline them and become more cost effective. This, of course, does not always boil down to the actual things that are only related to the medical stuff. This revolution or change in the process may involve other departments in the hospital such as human resources, payroll department, drug store, etcetera.Once this is practiced with consistency, one will observe that the usage of a clinical scorecard will significantly impact how things are improved in the clinical facility. This will definitely give anyone a snapshot of how the organization is performing and this assessment is based on facts, not assumptions.