Robert to Accomplish His Job Successfully, He

¶ … Robert to accomplish his job successfully, he has to center himself on three questions: What type of measures should be included in the physician practice balanced scorecard? What are the benefits of using a balanced scorecard? Awareness of the some of the barriers to providing individual level performance data. What type of measures should be included in the physician practice balanced scorecard? The three areas of the scorecard are: financial performance, clinical performance, and operating performance.

Each should contain succinct and thorough description of performance in each area, and selected indicators should show practice manager's monthly, quarterly, and annual reports. Measures should reflect present year's performance to past year's level of performance; performance of present month as comparison to the same month a year ago; comparison of scores to scores of a similar organization and practice; and comparison of scores to published scores of a similar practice and organization. Measures used should include -- for physicians -- measurement of patient volume (i.e.

increase or decrease of amount of patients to physician); measurement of patient charges (that charges should be timely, accurate, and consistent with service demanded); there should be also another measure for claims and the amount of time that it takes for these claims to be processed; finally measures should also include descriptions of the different vendors / and/or insurance companies that are featured by the medical organization as well as history and descriptions / details of their contractual arrangements.

What are the benefits of using a balanced scorecard? The scorecard acts as measure of performance -- like a snapshot -of the medical group. Using the three areas of financial performance, clinical performance, and operating performance, the scorecard acts as instrument for tying the whole organization together and providing an analysis of performance in each of its separate areas that together constitute one whole. Moreover, the scorecard provides some sort of estimation regarding whether, or not, the organization is progressing and its progress in each particular field.

Dividing the field into the three categories can also enable it to demarcate areas where progress and / modification needs to be implemented. For instance, whether one specific doctor is receiving fewer clients this year than the last may warrant a case for investigation; or whether certain resources need to be upgraded in a specific department; or whether one insurance has become too costly for the organization o maintain. Physicians' performance can be measured in line with general standards and targets can be established and then monitored for performance standards.

Performance, too, can be monitored and variance captured. Patient volume can be assessed; staff delays and errors caught; physician coding and billing rectified if need be; insurance deals identified and corrected - these are some of the benefits for employing a balanced scorecard.

Conjoined to the above is the advantage that the scorecard has to monitoring the general efficiency of the practice in terms of such variables as staff turnover; delays in waiting rooms or emergency areas; delays or problems ins scheduling patient visits; problems in communication such as delays in retuning calls; assessing the length of time that a person can be put on hold and expectations can be gauged and implemented for this from an overview of the scorecard; also patient satisfaction scoring and turnaround time for reports.

The scorecard can also help evaluate general patient satisfaction with the quality of service delivered. With the clinical performance of the physicians rated and described, consumers have more of an idea of what to expect. This is particularly so since the contemporary consumer is more keenly informed of trends and aware of some medical knowledge. Lastly, malpractice carriers who provide insurance coverage for physicians and patients are also provided with a certain benchmark whereby they can rate and assess physician's standards.

Contrast to previous years and comparisons to national standards can catch and prevent variations from occurring. Awareness of the some of the barriers to providing individual level performance data. One of the main problems in designing relational databases is that the information often changes. So, for instance, taking the area of Clinical Performance, Robert (in this case in question) can spend much expense and time gathering a team and aggregating the data and just as he has put it together the data may have changed.

Data values, too, may be unintentionally duplicated, so to deal with these two problems, programmers have developed a method called 'normalization' where data consistency and stability is ensured, redundancy is kept at bay, anomalies are eliminated, maintainability and current ness of the database is worked out (Bostrup, n.d.). Other problems include poor naming standards where having once accorded a piece of data a name, the label accorded it was so abstruse that later users find the concept / label enigmatic.

Objects, columns, and names should be carefully labeled and all should be buttressed with documentations sufficient to clearly explain the concept. Security procedures should be in place and the system should be tested in order to understand its limits. These are just a few of the problems with related successes / solutions that Davidson (2007) mentions may occur.

Structuring the data first can get the programmer lost in the forest of information, and, aside from rendering the subject too complex and hence incomprehensible for the layperson, end up not answering his or her question. It is, therefore, best to approach the subject from the perspective of a naive but concerned prospective client, slant questions that he or she is most likely to ask that stand central to the.