[Performance appraisal of internal health services]

In the present context of scarce resources, satisfying at best essential needs in the area of health care leads gradually towards a new conception of the management of health services and towards the development of information tools designed to evaluate performance. This paper presents a general framework for that purpose; it can be adapted to more specific and contextual problems. The authors review the difficulties involved in the measure of performance, the basic data required by the methods as well as some indicators that can be derived from their application, all exemplified in a case study.