An Empirical Investigation of Performance Assessment of Indian Hospital systems

Abstract

With their increasing importance in the global economy,Services are becoming critical in a countries economic progress. Growth in service sector is being taken as the indicator of country s economy progress.A radical shift is witnessed at present, with the share of world s GDPaccounted for by servicesector experiencing a sharp increase in almost all countries. Competitions in the global market and customer s demand for greater variety of high quality and low-cost services has necessitated operational and service excellence for these industries to outperform globally and sustain. To cater to these changing needs, services are adopting various improvement methodologies. The healthcare industry,in which the hospitals constitute a major volume needs to continuously improve to accomplish consistent service excellence and sustain in the market. The Indian healthcare market is price sensitive and volume driven.In recent years while the major industry market players witness subdued performance and dropping operating margins, the smaller-sized hospitals are finding it difficult to even survive in the environment of cut-throat competition from large chains. Hospitalsmust focus onfaster adoption of latest technology andcost-efficient operationsto make healthcare delivery better and also cost-effective. In the present complex and dynamic contexts, it is vital for an organization to be knowingly aware of its surroundings and quality of performance. Performance measurement is central to the concept of quality improvement.Performance of an organization should be measured based on the performance indicators and the assessment has to be multidimensional. It is necessary for the hospital management to have the right perspective in all matters concerning the hospital so that the hospital performance indicators are monitored and kept under control. Today with many professionally managed hospitals, even private equity players and financial institutions, have a say in the running of a hospital apart from the regular stakeholders. ..