A current look at the key performance measures considered critical by health care leaders.

The increased focus on health care quality is changing the face of performance measures. Traditional measures of financial performance are being complemented by indicators of satisfaction, medical error rates, infection control ,and more. This study surveyed health care executives to determine the performance indicators considered critical for organizational assessment and improvement. The findings suggest financial measures such as operating profit margin, days cash on hand, charity care, net profit margin, bad dept expense, and days in accounts receivable A/R continue to be critical for health care decision makers. These measures are complemented by non-financial indicators such as physician and employee satisfaction, hospital-acquired infection rates, surgical site infection rates, inpatient mortality, infection control outcomes, and medication error rates. The results of this study underscore the notion that health care administrators are concerned about delivering high-quality effective health care in which both customers and providers are satisfied and which is done in a strong financial environment.