Evaluating a health service taskforce

A large number of taskforces and other quality improvement teams have been set up to achieve change in recent years, both in health and elsewhere, but there has been relatively little systematic evaluation of the benefits obtained. This paper discusses alternative methodologies and frameworks for assessing the value of taskforces and other quality improvement teams in the public sector and concludes that the Performance Prism, used in conjunction with the public sector scorecard, a variant of the balanced scorecard, is most appropriate. The paper then describes a case study on the evaluation of a UK health service taskforce using the recommended approach and reflects on its successes and limitations.