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BWH was inducted into the Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame for Executing Strategy this month for achieving “breakthrough performance results” using the Web-based application to measure the hospital’s four dimensions of service, quality of care, people and financial strength.
BWH and the United States Postal Service, which uses the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) to measure its efficiency in delivering more than 200 billion mail pieces annually, were recognized during the Oct. 11 Hall of Fame induction ceremony as part of the BSC Government Summit in Washington, D.C.
“Today’s winners have achieved breakthrough performance results using the Balanced Scorecard and are truly strategy-focused organizations, said David P. Norton, president of Palladium Group and co-founder of the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative.
More than 1,200 physicians, nurses, administrators and senior leadership now have access to the Brigham and Women’s/Faulkner Hospitals Balanced Scorecard. The Web-based application includes a data warehouse that draws patient-level data from more than 80 sources.
“The Balanced Scorecard provides a cascade of data so each department and division and, in many cases, individual physicians can see how they are performing on specific measures like mortality or length of stay,” said Michael Gustafson, MD, MBA, vice president, Center for Clinical Excellence (CCE). “It allows us to link performance metrics to our strategic goals.”
For example, Obstetrics Division Chief David Acker, MD, this summer turned to the Balanced Scorecard to examine his division’s performance on episiotomies. The data showed variations among physicians of 5 percent to 40 percent.
The sharing of episiotomy data prompted an inquiry and division-wide discussion on quality improvement. “And what’s equally important to looking at this specific data has opened the eyes of many of our physicians to the Balanced Scorecard and how to use it,” Acker said.
The Balanced Scorecard now includes physician-level performance data for Surgery, Gynecology, Obstetrics, Orthopedics and Neurosurgery. In the next two months, work will be completed on the Emergency Medicine scorecard, as well as additional quality metrics for Obstetrics and further enhancements to a robust set of Faulkner Hospital cards. The CCE also recently added detailed outpatient statistics by category and cost center to allow tracking versus budget and last year’s performance. This past summer, the Balanced Scorecard began publishing quality measures with reports based on race, ethnicity and gender.
Gustafson said the CCE Decision Support Systems team is working to add ambulatory metrics for the first time to scorecards, which will help improve the relevance for departments such as Medicine, Neurology, Dermatology and Psychology in coming months. After that, Radiology and Pathology have expressed interest in collaborating on enhancing their scorecards.
The BW/F Balanced Scorecard is now the subject of a detailed case study and classroom instruction at Harvard School of Public Health. Eoin W. Trevelyan, DBA, uses the case study in his health policy and management courses for physician leaders from across the country.
The staff in the CCE Decision Support Systems group are available to assist physicians and departments in navigating the Balanced Scorecard and understanding their data. “We’re flexible and ready to accommodate use of the data by each department,” Gustafson said.