OBJECTIVE: The first step in the management of the performance is the understanding of how the performance is created. Once the model aimed at creating performance is defined, appropriate indicators to describe and monitor its status has to be defined. While in a traditional vision results are strictly related to financial dimension, other visions of “customers” analyse also the value creation for all stakeholders (Lebas and Euske, 2002).
Nowadays plenty of innovative health technologies are available as support for hospitals in facing different challenges. The employment of these technologies influences procedures and, thus, the quality of the service delivered. Accordingly, the process aimed to evaluate health technologies for organisational usage, known as Hospital-Based Health Technology Assessment (HB HTA), should be able to capture wide impacts on the performance. To do that, the evaluative process has to be conducted respecting 3 different perspectives: i) clinical; ii) economic; iii) organisational. Within the clinical perspective, besides health-related benefits and technological features, a crucial assessment issue concerns patients’ needs and perceptions. Indeed, patients are directly affected by innovation, in terms both of health status and of satisfaction for the service. Until now, studies have been prevalently focused on modalities for promoting involvement and empowerment of patients. Nevertheless, in order to avoid the risk of failing to realise the potential benefits of medical advancement, the traditional tendency of health service organisation to neglect users’ needs is no longer acceptable (Fulop et al., 2003).
The main purpose of this work is to identify which could be key performance areas (KPAs) and key performance indicators (KPIs) to include users’ standpoint in the evaluation of new health technologies to be adopted.
METHOD: A survey of patients affected by type 1 diabetes was conducted. The survey was composed of 25 questions concerning 3 macro-areas: i) patient experience; ii) patient satisfaction; iii) patient communication. Among these questions, the majority of them included 4 possible answers based on a rating scale and others were out-out questions principally to catalogue the population. The survey circulated online among associations of diabetics between July and September.
RESULTS:802 answers have been collected. The KPAs within the customer experience macro-area are related to strategic objectives of increasing usability and co-production potentialities. In the area of customer satisfaction, the KPAs concern the measurement of improvement of patients’ life quality. To enforce the connectivity is the strategic objective of the customer communication dimension. For each KPA statistically relevant, appropriate KPIs were defined.
CONCLUSION: The achievement of a better outcome from users’ point of view supports health organisations in the improvement of the whole performance. This work attempts the definition of a set of KPIs able to measure patients’ perspective regarding the employment of innovative technologies to provide healthcare service.
The work may have relevant implications both for academics and for practitioners. Studies aimed to explore how healthcare service is delivered and how performance measurement activities are performed in health organisations are being fostered. It also may represent a support for practitioners to identify value leverages from users’ perspective.
