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This book for students and faculty in health administration programs, nursing programs, and professionals who manage health departments or facilities, explains different performance measurement methods in health care and connects them with their practical impact on clinical patient outcomes.

The objective for the reader is to form a complete understanding of how data is used to reveal the empirical experience of actual bedside care. Using measurements it becomes possible to translate individual aspects of care into discrete, objective and analyzable phenomena.

The author, a social scientist with more than 20 years' experience working in health care institutions, orients the reader with a historical perspective on the transition from a physician-centered, volume-based reimbursement system to a quality-driven, data-centered culture and then moves into the primary roles of performance assessment and outcomes measure in the current health care environment. Combining the author's extensive theorietical understanding with his personal experience and examples from his pioneering quality management leadership, the book focuses on how measurements and data can be used to maintain the necessary balance between quality services and financial viability, and how measures can help to evaluate and improve organizational, clinical, and financial processes.

Chapter topics include:

• Fundamentals of data: types and methods of measure
• What to measure
• How accountability can be promoted through measurements
• How to use data to improve organizational processes
• Understanding the rationale for extrernal drivers of quality
• Report cards: what they are, how they work, and what they mean
• Understanding sources of internal organizational drivers of quality data
• Using data for performance improvement
• Appendices: Glossary of terms, Method/measurement grid (when to use what)