Organizational performance in the Italian health care sector

The new managerial reform initiatives have broadened public manager responsibility by increasingly emphasizing efficiency, effectiveness and long term economic performance. These conditions have become the topic in... [ view full abstract ]

The new managerial reform initiatives have broadened public manager responsibility by increasingly emphasizing efficiency, effectiveness and long term economic performance. These conditions have become the topic in performance evaluation. Peculiarities of public sector make the process of performance measurement really difficult, and there are many papers that underline this problem. (Bouckaert and Peters, 2002). At the same time, performance measurement and management systems are considered to be fundamental tool for improving rationality in decision making and improving organizational performance.
Focusing on the case of health care sector, performance data have two broad functions: to identify “what works” in promoting the objectives of the health care system and to identify the functional competence of specific organizations.
The objective of the research is to analyze the organizational performance measurement and management in public health care. In particular, in the first part of the research I'm going to analyze the performance measurement and evaluation system more broadly in public sector. In the second part I will undertake an in depth analysis of the situation in Italian health care sector. Here I will aim to outline the existing performance measurement system and how this system operate in health care organisations; what type of systems Italian hospitas use and if they are functioning effectively. Here I will also be analysing the connection between individual and organizational performance. In the last one part the research is taking in consideration system used in other countries to compare the two realities. It will be a multidisciplinary research (economic, management and healthcare discipline).
The research methodology is based on two fundamental pillars:
• In the first part, starting from a general analysis about organizational performance measurement system in public sector, the research after enter in a more specific analysis about these systems in health care sector.
• In the second part, information from public databases and from quantitative analyses (questionnaires) and qualitative analyses (interviews and case studies) are analysed.
Qualitative and quantitative approach are used, with the possibility of using mixed methods.
The research question are:
1. What are the features of organizational performance measuring and evaluation system in public health care firms?
2. What are the connections between measuring and evaluation system of individual and organizational performance?
3. How do performance measuring systems in health care operate in other countries?
The first expected results are that the principal systems used for organizational performance measurement are two: the Balance Scorecard and the Maxwell’s model. The problems, that has not already solved in the literature, are: are these systems used in a correct way? And are there any better systems?
I am Anna Aroni, a PhD student of University of Cagliari. I’m at my second year of PhD. At this moment I’ve already written a paper as coauthor and an other paper alone. For my Phd thesis I’m writing three connected papers.