Evaluation in the Health Resources and Services Administration. Improving program performance

The mission of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is to improve the health of the nation by assuring quality health care to underserved and vulnerable populations and by promoting a primary care and public health workforce. This article provides an overview of HRSA's prior work in performance measurement and highlights a current initiative designed to help the agency improve its performance measurement efforts in the context of the Government Performance and Results Act. This initiative began with an agencywide assessment of capacity to measure performance at program, bureau, and agency levels. Based on the findings, HRSA is moving forward both with technical assistance to individual bureaus in developing performance indicators and data sources and with activities to coordinate performance measurement for the agency as a whole.