Measuring social restoration performance of public psychiatric hospitals.

CURRENT INTEREST in assessing the performance of psychiatric hospitals is linked with the widespread conviction that, in expending their energies in day-to-day opera¬ tions, social organizations may fail to attain the efficiency expected of them. A corollary belief is that systematic observation of such organizations may lead to recommendations for improving their performance. At first sight it may appear necessary to use radically different methods of evaluating or¬ ganizations with such diverse purposes as edu¬ cation, national defense, health and welfare, and industrial production. However, with the development of formal systems of operations research, logistics analysis, and management science, certain common dimensions of analy¬ sis have been found useful in assessing different types of social organization. One such dimen¬ sion is organizational goals. To use a goal orientation in appraising so¬ cial organizations, it is necessary to determine the pattern of goals during a given period of operation, to define each go$l, and to select the best available measures of organizational re¬ sults to reflect effectiveness in the attainment of each goal.