Balanced Scored Card in Healthcare

This article discusses How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry. This research paper will talk about the balanced scorecard as applied to the Healthcare Industry. This paper also puts some emphasis on the performance of healthcare organization on the BSC management system mechanism, alongside the future outlook of healthcare services model in regards to the points highlighted in the below context.

Permalink: https://premiumacademicaffiliates.com/how-to-use-of-the-balanced-score-card-in-the-healthcare-industry

premiumacademicaffiates.com has the top and most qualified writers to help with any of your assignments. All you need to do is place an order with us.

This essay has been written by a student and not our expert nursing writers. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of premiumacademicaffiates.com 

How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry

Abstract

This research paper will talk about the balanced scorecard as applied to the Healthcare Industry. This paper also puts some emphasis on the performance of healthcare organization on the BSC management system mechanism, alongside the future outlook of healthcare services model in regards to the points highlighted in the below context. The current business atmosphere has seen an increasing demand of a strategic management system due to the need of organizations to survive, sustain and prosper in a tough competitive environment (Singh & Kumar, 2007).(How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

Very few are capable of bringing strategic management into a logical conclusion that is the realization of extremely complicated strategies (Singh & Kumar, 2007).  Additionally, for many organizations, the procedure is not cosmetic, but a genuine need to shift from the current to a better state in terms of profitability, growth, share of the market, and so on. Per Chan (2004), the systems of performance measurement play an essential role in assessing the strategic performance of any organization.

Therefore, a shift towards Balanced Scorecard (BSC) has surfaced as a managerial strategy to assess the strategic organizational performance. Performance Management (PM) of the healthcare domain is an essential factor of the management of the business. (How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

Additionally, it raises the value of PM appraisal system by adopting the internal processes of a business, customer aspects, financial aspects and employee learning, as well as, growth factors. Lastly. this paper highlights more on the application of the Balanced Scorecard as a management tool in the healthcare industry along with its benefits, background and the four major area it has to target.(How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

Introduction

This research paper will talk about the balanced scorecard as applied to the Healthcare Industry. I chose the healthcare industry as I work for the same domain as a senior consultant with Blue Cross Blue Shield and am well aware of the US IT healthcare practices. Furthermore, I am also aware of the provider payer network, hospital and insurers etc. (How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

This paper talks about using the balanced scorecard approach to evaluate and/or help formulate strategy. According to Hafner (1998) using the Balanced Scorecard initiative brought all the executives of the companies together to make sure they all are on the same page to attain the vision and goals set my their company in the right strategic direction.

Balance scorecard is a very useful tool to facilitate an organization’s plan to align management processes and a well vision strategic planning of the company. Balance scoreboard is very important as it helps them to draw and define long term strategy for the company.(How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

According to Kaplan & Norton (1996), “it is a performance measurement framework which also adds strategic non-financial performance procedures to the old financial metrics to give managers a more “balanced” view of organizational performance” (Kaplan & Norton, 1996).

BSC has helped sharpen the focus and better align the day to day activities with longer strategies. Also an organization can improve their communication and performance in all the sectors using the balance scoreboard. In addition, it benefits the organization to improve their communication and monitors organizations’ performance against strategic goals. It is a strategic management and planning system that is used enormously in various industries (let alone the healthcare sector) and non-profit and government organizations globally, by aligning business activities to the strategy and vision of the organization thus enhancing external and internal communications.(How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

Background

The balanced scorecard (BSC) was invented by Kaplan S. Robert a Harvard business school professor. Since its appearance, BSC has showed excellent vitality (Hitchins et al, 2001). It has successfully helped businesses in finding solutions regarding two key issues including performance assessment and strategy implementation. According (Hitchins et al, 2001), in a thousand companies worldwide, over 70% of them that utilized BSC find it to be the most influential tool for strategic management.

The balanced scorecard is a customer focused planning and process improvement tool targeted at focusing and driving the change process in most of the industries today. It explains strategy into an integrated set of financial and non-financial procedures that interact with the organizational strategy and with employees to provide them with feedback on what should be their plan of action to achieve their goal and objective. (How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

The balanced scorecard is an effective strategic planning tool that provides managers an overall view on how well the organization is succeeding in meeting its mission and vision. By focusing on both financial and non-financial performance targets and outcomes, the balanced scorecard helps managers to view the organization from all sides to determine if the organization is properly aligned.(How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

The core idea behind BSC is that it is an implementation strategy tool, which, through customer, finance, learning and development, and internal processes indicators depicts the relationship between the strategic track of an organization to attain performance appraisal and enhancement and the strategy implementation (Kaplan & Norton, 1996). BSC is a strategic planning and management system that organizations use to:(How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

• Communicate what they are trying to accomplish
• Align the day-to-day work that everyone is doing with strategy
• Prioritize projects, products, and services
• Measure and monitor progress towards strategic targets

Five key functional areas chosen to develop a common set of measures for the healthcare organization are:

• Human resources
• Facility management
• Environment health and safety
• Information technology
• Financial operations

The system links the strategy elements such as mission, vision, core values (what we believe in), strategic focus areas and the more operational components like objectives (continuous improvement activities), measures (which track strategic performance), targets (our desired level of performance), and initiatives (projects that help you reach your targets).

There are 4 perspectives to maintain a perfect balance score which are innovation, finance, customer and process perspective.

• Innovation helps to achieve the longterm goal of an origination. Innovation depends on people skills and system capabilities and all these things helps an organization to become innovative. This perspective requires people skills, and system capabilities (Renaud, 2013).(How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)
• Financial perspective focuses on how the strategy delivers the required financial result and how it measures success profitability and growth. The BSC takes care of several factors like the non-financial and financial measures, short and long-term objectives, internal and external environment and  procedures and the performance of the management (Norton, 2000). Therefore, the healthcare domain has utilized this perspective to reflect the integrated operations.
• Customer perspective is purely customer focused and concentrates on the outcomes of the strategy and the customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction.(How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)
• Process perspective, focuses on how to improve the works to reach the goal. It is critical to the success of a strategy.

Benefits

Balanced scorecards have many benefits. They are:

• Promote implementation of organizational strategies.
• Updating the organizational strategies.
• Effective communication within the organization.
• Improve focus and alignment among divisional or individual goals and the organization’s goals and strategies.
• Align annual or short-term operating plans and performance evaluation measurement with long-term strategies.

Balance Scorecards as a Management Tool In Healthcare

                According to Bisbe, J., & Barrubés, J. (2012), the balanced scorecard concept lays focus on the linkage of measurement to a strategy map and this connection between the strategy map and measurement system elevates the role of non-financial measures in strategy implementation and evaluation.  It enhanced trust and facilitated better dialogue, higher level of employee involvement.(How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

Though there are some measures that maybe overlooked when it comes to balance scorecards, some measures are more superior to others, and particularly with cascaded Balanced Scorecards at a department or clinical level, between operational measures and strategic measures. Strategic measures become more superior as they shed more light on the patient’s focus and his or her satisfaction, putting what is important first unlike operational measures.(How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

                 According to Sharma, A. (2009), strict financial indicators such as debt ratios and rate of debt coverage among other things, should probably be given a lesser weight, whereas greater importance should be placed on clinical-economic indicators lessening from the exploitation of the minimum data set basically.

These can include; average length of stay attuned for case complexity, pharmaceutical costs, complexity used for cost per case, and indicators of cost-effectiveness. Hoque, Z. (2013) shares and says that an idea to make this process better would be to determine whether clinicians and managers share a common vision about what the most relevant measures are, as they will often have different and/or contradictory views about these measures.(How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

Strategy implementation of BSC in the healthcare industry

To attain a competitive edge, in addition to retaining customers, healthcare institutions have become innovative to meet the changing requirements of their payers, providers, hospitals, medicaid and medicare. Innovativeness leads to the consumer satisfaction which in turn, has strengthened the industry’s financial position. (How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

According to Smeth (2006), strategies may be excellently drawn, as well as, presented, but the issue is that strategy is not excellently communicated to individuals involved in the process of execution. He further highlighted the fact that although the execution of a strategy is everyone’s business in an organization, the eventual outcome is poor execution of a strategy in many organizations. The strategy is formulated by the top management, but its execution is a bottom up procedure.

BSBC helped implement Balanced Scorecard by communicating the strategy in the following way

Per Hafner (1998), “in order to share new ideas and thoughts on the organizational performance measurement and management system based on the Balanced Scorecard, a university “think thank” Performance Champions group was established that meets quarterly as a forum (Hafner, 1998)”. The group members composed of executives and department heads responsible with the BSC have the duty to:(How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

• Thorough review of the measurement initiatives
• Explore trends and models that are being used in other sectors and domains
• Provide guidance and direction for enhancing the BSC depending on how and what part should be utilized based of the subjective need and demand of the organization.

Related Content: Balanced Scorecard for United General’s Emergency Department – Balanced Scorecard Creation

In order to better communicate the performance architecture ideology a new website was created in our company that focused on:

• BCBS’s vision, mission, values and goals
• The Balanced Scorecard approach and objectives that the company will follow to optimize profits, processes and people’s effectiveness
• Customer satisfaction and organizational surveys that’s provided a detailed outline of the gaps that needed to be covered
• Presentation materials and initiative status reports

As you continue, premiumacademicaffiates.com has the top and most qualified writers to help with any of your assignments. All you need to do is place an order with us. (How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)(How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

Apart from BSC being an appraisal system indicator, it is also a system of strategic management. Namazi & Abhari (2010) identified that the problem of poor strategic implementation, alongside the dependence of healthcare measures only to assess the strategic performance of an organization to adopt the BSC as a tool to connect performance measures by viewing the strategic vision of the bank from four diverse perspectives. (How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

They include; internal processes, customer, financial and learning and development. My company uses these four areas to document a strategic sense in regards to cause and effect relationship between the present activities of the organization and its long-term accomplishment.(How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

a)     Customers:The customer perspective addresses the question of how the firm is viewed by its customers and how well the firm is serving its targeted customers in order to meet the financial objectives. Generally, customers view the firm in terms of time, quality, performance and cost. Through the customer perspective, the top managers and consultants identify their competing customer and market segments by doing a SWOT analysis. They then select performance measures for these targeted segments. Examples of core customer measures are:

1. Customer satisfaction and retention
2. Targeting new customer acquisition.
3. Customer profitability.
4. Market share for the targeted segments.

b)     Financial Perspective:  Financial measures talks about the readily measurable economic consequences of actions already taken. They provide a detailed analysis on the improvement  of the organization’s strategy, deployment, and implementation plan. Examples of financial indicators include:(How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

1. Economic value added (EVA).
2. Generation of cash flow.
3. Operating income and return on investments and assets.
4. Rapid sales growth.

The objectives from financial perspective are as follows:

1. Measuring the revenue growth
2. Profitability for the return on equity
3. Cost leadership

c)      Internal processes of the organization:internal processes of an organization means the expectations of performance may be attained. This perception refers to the answer of the question of what business processes the healthcare company must excel at, in order to satisfy its shareholders and customers. (How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

The main focus of this perception is the outcomes of the internal processes of the healthcare company that lead to its financial success, alongside, customer satisfaction while maintaining all the regulatory compliance standards. Fundamentally, the perception is based on producing services and products in the most effective and efficient ways to benefit the target audience and to maximize growth and profits. (How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

Mostly utilized measures include non-conformance cost, quality cost, time savings and process innovation. In order to retain the target customer and attain the shareholder’s requirements regarding financial returns, managers require putting extreme emphasis on customer satisfaction and internal processes. This is achieved through the establishment of measurable indicators.

d)     Learning and growth:The learning and growth perspective focusses on the infrastructure the organization must have to create long-term growth, progress and improvement. The three principal sources of any organization are people, processes and the system.

The company identifies gaps by doing a GAP Analysis between existing capabilities of people, systems, and procedures and the actions required to achieve the effective performance. To close gaps, the organization must invest in re-skilling employees maybe by educating them by effective training, improving information technology and aligning organizational procedures and routines. The three objectives of learning and growth perspective include(How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

1. Manufacturing learning- here time to new process maturity is measured
2. Product focus- here percentage of product representing sales is measured
3. Time to market- here the time compared to that of competitor’s time is measured

As you continue, premiumacademicaffiates.com has the top and most qualified writers to help with any of your assignments. All you need to do is place an order with us. (How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

Conclusion

In the BSC governance mechanism, Medicaid organizations are required to come up with a management committee which will have the final authority to approve the BSC framework, design and content to make sure the accordance between the healthcare organization’s strategy and its implementation points. (How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

This process consists of two integral process parts, like the comprehension of the strategic objective implementation by evaluating the completion of the indicators in the BSC and the second one, checking the BSC operation so as to equal the design of the scorecard and review processes. (How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

Nonetheless, this will rely on the enhancement of technologies of information security, in order for the healthcare organization to progress in innovative financial products and improve their core competitiveness. Our company’s model is based on the implication of the knowledge-based economy, alongside the cultural grade. This will promote the mode of thinking and services.(How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

This study can be viewed as part of an investigation of the operation of numerous assessment strategies created in the past several years. It is therefore expected that with the elevated demands from analysts of the healthcare sector, stakeholders, practitioners and educators, the BSC will be broadly utilized in the banking industry all over the world (Silk, 1998).(How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry) 

I think there is still some room for improvements, to excel to identify the processes and activities that deliver critical services to both internal and external stakeholders and customers. Effective BSC application comes from the top management executives who show their commitment to the BSC adoption. (How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

Design measure to access all core competencies such as productivity, accuracy, effective use of the available resources etc. Additionally, the healthcare sector should at the same time speed up the renovation of service delivery model to enhance the speed of mixed services so as to improve the international competitiveness.(How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

Related Content: The impact of the use of Balanced Scorecard as performance measure

This study also suggest that the healthcare sector should improve the BSC technique so as to remain appropriate not only in their own operations but also to the increasingly changing macro-environmental dynamics. Also, it can also benefit directions to healthcare companies when they consider strategies of performance assessment. (How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

The key reason for this study was to increase the understanding on how this BSC strategy may be developed, as well as, applied to evaluate the performance of companies. Although some of the healthcare companies in this research did not utilize the BSC before, this research has emphasized the essence of looking at performance from other angles, alongside the healthcare perspective.(How to Use of the Balanced Score Card in the Healthcare Industry)

     Reference:             

• Chan, Y., (2004), Performance measurement and adoption of balanced scorecards: A survey of municipal governments in the USA and Canada. International journal of public sector management, 17(3), pp 204-221.
• Singh, M., & Kumar, S. (2007). Balanced Scorecard Implementations Global and Indian Experiences, Indian Studies Management Journal, (11), 21-39
• Kaplan, R. S., & Norton, D. P. (1992). The balanced scorecard – Measures that drive performance. Harvard Business Review.
• Hafner, K., A. (1998), Partnership for performance: The Balanced Scorecard put to the test at the University of California, Director, Business Initiatives, University of California Office of the President, available at: http://rec.hku.hk/steve/Msc/reco%206027/handouts/10-98-bal-scor-chapter2.pdf.
• https://www.balancedscorecard.org/BSC-Basics/About-the-Balanced-Scorecard
• Renaud, E. (2013). 1. Balance score card perspective. Retrieved from Business Source Complete,
• Chang, W, Tung, Y, Huang, C, and Yang, M (2008) Performance improvement after implementing the Balanced Scorecard: A large hospitals experience in Taiwan. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 19(11) 1143-1154.  
• Dyball, M, Cummings, L and Yu, H (2011) Adoption of the concept of a Balanced Scorecard within NSW Health: An exploration of staff attitudes. Financial Accountability & Management, 27(3), 335-361
• Edwards, J (2008) Brigham and Women’s Hospital: “Moving the Needle” Takes People, Processes, and Leadership, The Commonwealth Fund 
• Hitchins, J., Hogg, M., Mallet, D., (2001), Banking : a regulatory accounting and auditing guide. London : ABG, 4th ed.
• Garling, W (2008) Earning the Execution Premium at Nemours Health System. Balanced Scorecard Report 10 (4), 6-8
• Gottlieb, G (2008) Moving from performance measurement to strategy management at Brighamand Women’s / Faulkner Hospital. Balanced Scorecard Report, 10 (2), 11-13
• Kaplan, R and Norton, D (2008) The Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage. Cambridge MA: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.
• Kaplan, R. S., & Norton, D. P. (1996) Linking the balanced scorecard to strategy. California management review, 39(1), pp. 53-79.
• Kollberg, B and Elg, M (2010) The practice of the Balanced Scorecard in health care services. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management 60 (5), 427-445
• Lars-Goran Aidemark.  (2001) The meaning of balanced scorecards in the health care organisation. Financial Accountability & Management, 17(1), 23-40.
• Schwartz & Jay. 2005. Balanced Scorecard versus total quality management: which is better for your organization?. National Institutes of Health. National Library of Medicine. USA.
• Stefan, T.2004. Performance measurement: from philosophy to practice. international journal of productivity and performance management. Vol 53 No, 8. 2004. Pp 726-737.
• Margarita, I. (2008). The Balanced Scorecard Method, From Theory to Practice. vilnius : Romeris University publishing center. 1(3), 18-28.
• Norton, D. (2000), Beware: The Unbalanced Scorecard. Balanced Scorecard Report, The Institute of Management Accountants, Montvale, NJ, March.
• Thomas B. 2003. Sustainability Management with Balanced Scorecard. International summer academy on technology studies-corporate sustainability 13. Jul 2003 – 18. Jul 2003. University of st Gallen.
• Bisbe, J., & Barrubés, J. (2012). The balanced scorecard as a management tool for assessing and monitoring strategy implementation in health care organizations. Revista Española de Cardiología (English Edition), 65(10), 919-927.
• Hoque, Z. (2013). Celebrating 20 years of the Balanced Scorecard: relevance lost or relevance gained and sustained?.
• Sharma, A. (2009). Implementing balance scorecard for performance measurement. ICFAI Journal of Business Strategy, 6(1), 7-16.

Related FAQs

1. Is the Balanced Scorecard relevant to health care?

Use of the balanced scorecard in health care Since Kaplan and Norton published their article proposing a balanced scorecard, the concept has been widely adopted by industry and health care provider organizations. 

2. What types of organizations use the Balanced Scorecard?

Although it started out being used primarily in the private sector, you now see the Balanced Scorecard in healthcare, nonprofit, and government organizations, as well as a number of other types of associations.

3. What is a balanced scorecard for performance management?

During a yearlong research project with 12 companies at the leading edge of performance management, the authors developed a “balanced scorecard;” a new performance measurement system that gives top managers a fast but comprehensive view of their business.

Read More:

https://premiumacademicaffiliates.com/interpersonal-and-workplace-conflict-in-nursing/

https://premiumacademicaffiliates.com/clinical-application-of-synergy-model-for-patient-care/

All Related Artcles