PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT IN THE ITALIAN HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY

Legislative Decree no. 150/2009 about optimization of the public job productivity, efficiency and transparency in Public Administrations, restates an already known issue in the public industry: the performance management.The... [ view full abstract ]

Legislative Decree no. 150/2009 about optimization of the public job productivity, efficiency and transparency in Public Administrations, restates an already known issue in the public industry: the performance management.
The decree illustrates the need to have an evaluation of both the management and services results and executive and non-managerial staff performances.
The importance of assessment and accountability is highlighted in the Decree no.150/2009 through the illustration of evaluation methodologies, with the proposal of “performance cycle", and how to differentiate wage, according to a defined additional percentage, set to reward results and productivity.
The research project focuses on the analysis of the performance cycle in healthcare industry. The relevance of examining this industry comes from the weight of very much debated themes, like spending control and conservation and development services to citizens, but also for the presence of unquestionable peculiarities. The common aspect, which is not often visible in other branches of the public administration system, is the expertise in the employment of well-established performance indicators and management procedures.
Furthermore, the healthcare industry is subject to performance assessment processes that involve the whole Italian healthcare system, with procedures and indicators that incorporate different institutions, from Government to Regions and firms in a constant and organized flow of information that goes from the bottom to the top and from the top to the bottom.
The research project examines the requirements for an effective employment and realization of the performance evaluation cycle, like the decree states. This involves investigating on objectives definition and assignment, the connection between objectives - resources, supervising, checking and evaluating successful system and reporting results. This creates a new cycle where new objectives are defined and assigned.
The AGENAS project depicts the most important parts of the performance cycle in the healthcare industry, thus contributing to the assessment of industries and staff performance in the public administration system.
The project involves different step. The quantitative analysis starts from a questionnaire which investigates on how this performance cycle is used in the Italian healthcare firms. The sample is made up of 248 firms; the examined period is 2009 - 2010, while the interviews start in October 2011 and end in January 2012. 187 firms gave their feedback with a response rate of 74.8%. After the quantitative analysis of the main Italian healthcare entities, with a detailed look at original elements as regards budget management and human resources, we have selected 52 firms. The final part of the project highlights the conclusions and the similarities of 5 samples.
Management systems are more effective in budgeting and business planning. There is no a direct correlation between objectives distribution and results evaluation with merit recognition. Finally, the last aspect we focus on is the role of the Region as main coordinator with a guiding role.