Small hospitals and performance measurement: implications and strategies

Hospitals are held increasingly accountable for the services they provide. While small hospitals may often lack resources to meet performance measurement mandates, generally, they are not exempt from requirements to submit performance data to accrediting and regulatory bodies. Presents an approach to obtaining, developing, and evaluating performance indicators that may be useful to small hospitals in meeting their mandates for public accountability and quality improvement. Takes into account resource limitations faced by these hospitals, both human and technological, and suggests a number of measures that are potentially useful for demonstrating accountability, benchmarking, and quality improvement.