Fauziah Rabbani.
Improving quality of care in hospitals: is there a role for performance management?.
Pak J Public Health Jan ;1(1):53-5.

Hospitals are an important part of any health system. In Low Income Countries (LICs) lack of appropriate quality services at the Primary Health Care level encourages patients to proceed directly to the hospitals. Improving hospital performance can therefore maximize health benefits and improve health systems. In order to provide the highest quality patient care and to follow through with performance improvement initiatives, hospitals have begun to apply performance management (PM) tools like TQM, Benchmarking, ISO 9000 certifications, Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria, European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) model and the Balanced Scorecard (BSC). BSC is a multidimensional strategic framework with widespread use in high income countries (HICs). BSC has now been successfully implemented as a PM system to manage the delivery of primary health care services in Afghanistan. A recent hospital based case study conducted at an ISO certified hospital in Karachi also showed emerging signs of a positive change in units where BSC was successfully implemented. Considering the successful application of BSC to assess and improve health service capacity, quality and service delivery it is worthwhile exploring the large scale use of PM tools in LIC hospital settings.

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