A comparative performance scorecard for federally funded community health centers in North Carolina.

To make informed management decisions, healthcare executives must have timely and useful information about the performance of their organizations. A review of the methods used by the Health Resources and Services Administration's Bureau of Primary Health Care to evaluate the performance of community health centers (CHCs) revealed a lack of such information. This information gap motivated the development of a comparative performance scorecard for the federally funded CHCs in North Carolina. The scorecard includes 19 indicators in four performance dimensions (access to care, financial performance, human resources, and utilization and productivity). A survey of participating CHC executive directors showed that the comparative performance scorecard is a useful tool for managing and evaluating the performance of CHCs.