Quality initiatives: department scorecard: a tool to help drive imaging care delivery performance

The radiology department at a midwestern U.S. children's hospital has created a scorecard that is presented quarterly to the institutional leadership and is available to all radiology employees on the institutional intranet. The scorecard currently has 33 measures in six areas: clinical services (safety, quality, timeliness); education; research; professionalism, communication, and user satisfaction; finances and administration; and staffing. For each measure, the goal, current value of the measure, interval at which the measure is updated, date of last update, and previous value of the measure are listed. Each measure was reviewed over time to determine those measures for which target goals were met. Results indicate that a visible and transparent department scorecard is one of the more powerful tools available to the radiology leadership to call attention to and improve performance in specific areas. The use of such a scorecard can help develop a departmental culture of quality improvement, focus healthcare providers on specific quality improvement projects, and drive departmental performance.