Indicators of Hospital Performance Evaluation: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Background and Objectives: The reliability of hospital assessment results depends on the appropriateness of the indicators used. In this study, we systematically review the literature to identify the major indicators of hospital performance evaluation, as employed in performance assessment literature. Methods: Literature databases including PUBMED, Scopus, Science Direct, Google scholar, DOJA, and OVID were searched using “hospital," “indicator," “criteria," “evaluation," “measurement," and “performance" as keywords. The selected articles were critically appraised by two reviewers. The indicators were then extracted from selected articles. Findings: From the total of 8362 articles with relevant content, 4761 were selected based on the title. These were further filtered based on the specific objective of the research and eliminating the duplications, to obtain 249 mostly relevant papers. Among these, 23 articles which fulfilled the inclusion criteria were reviewed. A total of 218 indicators were found to be used in the literatures. The average length of stay and bed occupancy rate were used in hospital performance assessment most frequently.es. Conclusions: Our results indicated that evaluators were mostly interested in use of quantitative indicators in hospital performance assessment. In addition, a diverse range of indicators was used for evaluating hospital services quality. It is recommended that hospital managers select a combination of quantitative and qualitative indicators for accurate monitoring of their hospital performance.