Performance monitoring in the Victorian health care system: an exploratory study

This paper reports on an exploratory study which aims to improve our understanding of how the Chief Executive Officers of Victorian health services monitor strategic and operational performance in their organisations. As a component of a large scale human resource management study, we surveyed 130 Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of Victorian health sector agencies. Our findings suggest that performance monitoring was more advanced among the larger Victorian health sector organisations, and that there were areas for improvement throughout the system. Overall, the CEOs reported limited use of performance indicators related to service and clinical perspectives, with financial and volume indicators most widely used. There was little evidence that these organisations had processes in place (such as benchmarking and linking required outcomes to staff performance management) to understand the implications of the performance information and translate them into management action. The findings suggest that the sector requires technical expertise and support in data reporting, benchmarking and quality improvement in order to improve performance monitoring and ensure its relevance to strategic control, but further study is required.