Quality balanced scorecard for the outpatient clinic
Authors: Latukha O. A. , Son I. M. , Bravve Yu. I. , Kalinichenko A. V. , Pushkareva E. A. , Tolstova K. S. 
Published: January 2024

The quality audit system for healthcare in various countries is based on the quality of medical services, the satisfaction of the patient and his relatives, as well as the quality of medical documentation. At the same time, quality indicators of healthcare facilities include criteria of the social and economic efficiency. Often these groups of indicators are considered by researchers separately from each other, and the literature available does not show balanced approaches to combining indicators from different groups within one process, which served as the basis for this work.

Aim. The article is devoted to identifying the specifics of quality balanced scorecard for outpatient clinic using the example of the results of preventive examination for children in the first year of life.

Material and methods. The study of quality indicators of the outpatient clinic was carried out from 2019 to 2023. The base of the study was the Clinical Consultative and Diagnostic Clinic № 27 in Novosibirsk. The study of the Clinic development was carried out from 2012 to 2023. The work used data from a social and expert survey of managers (20122018), as well as comparative modeling, general logical methods and techniques.

Results. The longest multi-level and complex medical service is the process of preventive examination of children in the first year of life. Therefore, using his example, a quality balanced scorecard for the outpatient clinic was developed. At the first stage, medical quality criteria were determined. Patients were interviewed and quality criteria important for the patients' parents were determined. The complexity, multi-stage nature and short time frame for providing medical services determined the criteria for the economic efficiency. At the second stage, criteria for the management effectiveness and criteria for quality monitoring were developed, which allow department heads to track key performance indicators, as well as build coordinated work between various departments. At the third stage, the quality criteria were developed, which, on the one hand, reflect the clinic work, and, on the other hand, are not redundant and can be used to assess the effectiveness of the organization as a whole.

Conclusion. The study showed that to increase the sustainability of the clinic development, effective monitoring based on key performance indicators is necessary. The classical approach to determining the effectiveness of medical facilities is based on general performance indicators to the quality criteria of individual processes, which does not allow identifying violations in individual medical and auxiliary processes, and, accordingly, does not allow identifying ways to solve them. It also does not indicate the level of violation. The use of a process and system approach in developing quality criteria allows developing a quality balanced scorecard with respect to the criteria of various groups, which ultimately reflects the effectiveness of processes as a whole, provides an understanding of cause-and-effect relationships and identifies the root cause of destabilization.