Essay Example: Use of the Balanced Scorecard in Health Care

It is important to mention that Balanced Scorecard is applied as one of the strategic management measurements that are used to improve as well as identify different internal business functions as well as their resulting external impacts (Zelman et al., 2003). Notably, organizations use Balanced Scorecards to measure as well as to provide feedback to their organizations. Therefore, the paper intends to discuss how a Balanced Scorecard is applied in the healthcare sector. The discussion will look at how this concept is used and misused in the healthcare sector.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Being an important tool for any organization, Balanced Scorecard enables the managers to view the business from various important perspectives. The tool gives the business to re-evaluate how customers see them. The balanced scorecard also enables the organization to ask itself what it should excel at, which is the internal perspective (Zelman et al., 2003). The third is the innovation and learning perspective, where the organization decides to continue to improve and create value or not. The last is the financial perspective, where the organization asks itself the concern of shareholders to the business. Understandably, the healthcare sector has been using this tool in a bid to improve the outcomes of this sector. It has widely been applied in private entities (Zelman et al., 2003).

As mentioned, the balanced scorecard is a very important tool for any organization. As Zelman et al. (2003) puts it, this tool has been one of the most important innovations in management. The main purpose of a balanced scorecard in healthcare is to ensure long-term survival and adaptation. Hence, the main focus lies on the achievement of the goals of the organizational missions, service improvement, strategic management, as well as quality management. All these have positive impacts on healthcare outcomes. The effective use of a balanced scorecard has enabled various healthcare organizations to improve on the aspects of public accountability, the achievement of the stated goals and mission, and addressing specific goals of the healthcare sector (Zelman et al., 2003). Also, there has been an improvement in service and program delivery. The use of the above-stated perspectives of the balanced scorecard tool is responsible for this success in health care.

However, it should be noted that a balanced scorecard has sometimes been misused. Notably, this tool intends to help organizations find a meaningful measure, especially when the strategy put in place seems immeasurable (Zelman et al., 2003). However, most of the balanced scorecards are filled with vague and lame measures that make them useless. Also, as mentioned above, the tool should be used to help report and analyze measures so that they can indicate the actual performance (Zelman et al., 2003). However, most are misused and does not indicate such goals.

The fact that a balanced scorecard should engage people within the organization to measure performance honestly, willingly, and with ease as possible is often misused in this management tool. In most cases, the story of true organizational performance is not shown (Zelman et al., 2003).

In conclusion, the concepts of a balanced scorecard are very relevant to the healthcare sector. Various organizations that have tried to use this tool have seen some improvement in their structure. However, there has been misuse of this tool by various organizations. To completely benefit from the balanced scorecard, organizational management should, therefore, ensure that the perspectives and concepts are adhered to.

Reference

Zelman, W. N., Pink, G. H., & Matthias, C. B. (2003). Use of the balanced scorecard in health care. Journal of health care Finance, 29(4), 1-16.

www.jsofian.files.wordpress.com/2006/12/use-of-bsc-in-health-care.pdf