Performance Management Measures

Mon, 12/01/2014 - 10:19 -- karnold

I am working on enhancing our QI Plan and developing a Performance Management system.  I am struggling with the differences between Performance Measures and the many measurable outcomes we already track through our CHIPs, Strategic Plans, etc.  It seems like duplication.  I'm not sure if we are to create a new set of measures for our PM system or reference the tracking that is already occurring as a means of PM (CHIP, SP, program reports, etc).  I see some plans spell out certain performance measures that they are monitoring while another plan I saw referenced reviews and assessments that are done at designated frequencies as their system for monitoring performance. Any advice would be greatly appreciated...

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Submitted by Carlylb on

We have a monthly report for each of our program areas.  The report includes all our measures, and we just added a plan collumn (CHIP, SP, etc) to record if the measure supports one of our plans.  This help reduce duplicate data collection and the measures can be easily pulled into a more specific report if needed.  We used Turning Point's Public Health Performance Management Self-Assessment tool to guide our report and selection of measures. 

The report is sectioned into the areas of Health Status, Public Health Capacity, Workforce Development, Data & Information Systems, Customer focus & Satisfaction, Financial Systems, Management Practices, and Service Delivers.  Under each section we listed applicable measures to the specific area which would help us measure capacity, efficiency, and quality (including measures from our plans). We have a collumn next to the measures which we list any national standards that we want to compare ourselves.  We have a collumn which we record the assigned staff person for the collecting and reporting the data for each measure.  Other collumns include months of the current year, year total or average, and 3 previous year's totals followed by a trend line.  All the program reports are in one file, but separate tabs.  The file is shared on google drive and assigned personnel update it monthly (or quarterly/yearly for some measures-we just merged the cells for those months)

I think the key is not to select so many measures that it overwhelms the staff.  Once you establish data collection methods, you can always add additional measures later.  Hope this is helpful. I'd love to hear what others are doing.

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Rhonda Bartow

Submitted by Cherstin on

Send me your email address and I will send you our PM plan.  I think that it clearly explains how we selected our measures and how we track progress.  We fully met this measure for Accreditation, so I think that it's a good example to start from. 

Cherstin Callon (cherstin.callon@deschutes.org)

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Cherstin Callon
Quality Improvement Specialist
Deschutes County Health Services, Public Health
cherstin.callon@deschutes.org

Submitted by MSteinkamp on

There is tons of inforation on the net regarding PM, and you can find support for both sides.

I don't view CHIPs and the Strategic Plan iniatives/performance tracking as the same thing as Performance Measures.  Performance Management is about what your public health agency is in business to do.  If you read literature on Performance Management Systems, they specificially state that you should only track what you have control of, and this doesn't fit CHIPs (if its truly a "community" effort).  As for Strategic Plans, they may or may not be focused on activities that you are in business to do and rarely focuses on everything public health is suppose to do.  If they are great, if not, they're not much help.

For public health, the 10 Essential Services from NACCHO, defines the business of public health well.  Our Performance Measures focus on this and our indicators (tracking achievement of the measures) utilize administrative reports from programs (such as % clients w/ immunizations up-to-date, number of EH reinspections done because of violations, etc.), few Strategic Plan goals (only when applicable), no CHIP goals. 

In trying to show we are doing what we are in business for, we have expanded the data tracking for programs or transitioned the data that has been tracked for years into meaning something.  When putting ours together, we found holes in what we were tracking...totally missing some areas such as community education.  Some of the tracking we had done for as long as anyone could remember was just data for data sake.  Putting it to a measure or revamping it a bit put meaning to it and now tells a story.

Since the 10 Essential Services doesn't truly cover programs focusing on operations (such as accounting, IT, building & grounds, etc.) or transparency with our governing Board, we added Domain 11 and 12 from PHAB.  In our view, these are just as important for the whole agency to achieve the 10 Essential Services.

I hope this helps you some.  It is definately can be a confusing topic, but well worth the work when you start seeing the pay-offs of improved public health performance.

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Submitted by karnold on

Thank you to all those who commented!  Each of your responses helps me to organize my thoughts as I continue to define the process of establishing our PM System.  Many thanks!!!

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