NHS Balanced scorecard Essay -- British Health Care, Politics

This part of the assignment will discuss balanced carte du jour that has been implemented by UK National Health Service (NHS), how it has influenced and impacted upon the performance measures of this nerve. Since its launch in 1948, the NHS has grown to become the worlds largest publicly funded wellness service. NHS employs more than 1.7m people and deals on average with 1m patients every 36 hours. It is also one of the most efficient, most egalitarian and most comprehensive. Even though NHS work in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are managed separately and each might have some system differences, they remain similar in most respects and perish to a single, unified system. The NHS core principle is that good healthcare should be available to all, regardless of wealth. (NHS, 2010) Success of NHS depends on how well the organisation balance bore and customer (patient) satisfaction with adequate financing and long-range goals. Health care organisations such as NHS must deal with government oversight, managed care, new technologies, and increasing pharmaceutic prices. The NHS has adopted a performance measurement system that is based on the concept of balanced scorecard in order to obtain a broader take up of performance within the organisation (Department of Health, 2001). Although, measuring performance evaluation of health care system could be difficult, it can on the other hand exercise several purposes and can help facilitate change and improvements in the effectiveness and quality of health care. It seems peculiar to focus on performance measures in organisation such as NHS, but even NHS is facing increasing competitive pressures when considering ageing populations increasing demand, improved treatment... ...t in public/patient accountability, service talent and staff involvement to a highly prominent level. Government has developed Star Ratings system which monitors improvements in accountability measures. The experience of the Star Rat ings system in respect of service efficiency indicates that it is prudent to act pro-actively rather than re-actively. It is vital to consider that the Government is expecting demonstrable improvements in health services rather than elaborateness alone (Radnor and Lovell, 2003). Though it is intricate to demonstrably prove in quantitative terms that the balanced scorecard can deliver efficiency improvements at the bug out of its implementation, it can be shown in quantitative terms that a well designed fully cascaded balanced scorecard system should address the needs of a health care system. (Radnor and Lovell, 2003, p. 105)