Medical safety management using balanced scorecard (BSC)

Abstract

The balanced scorecard (BSC) is a strategy management tool, that can be used to keep track of the accomplishment of activities by the staff and to monitor the consequences arising from these actions. We adopted BSC as a management tool for medical safety activity from 2015. We set up quality indicators (QI) that are targets to be attained in BSC. In 2016, our own risk classification “ABC” was prepared to analyze incident reports regardless of impact level. Class A is a case to be prevented and Class C to be warned. Class B is neither A nor C. In consequence, number of incident report increased to 2639 (814 increase over the previous year). The ratio of incident level 0 to others reached to 30.8% (target value set in advance was 30%). We think the introduction of BSC and QI contributed to the promotion of medical safety activity in part through informing the staff with an objective target. These results suggest that BSC is a valuable tool for medical safety management.