Key Performance Indicators for Mental Health Day Hospitals.

Abstract

Aims: It was planned that the organizational decision makers would have an increased ability to make an informed decision by having an additional source of information by the introduction of the KPI’s. A secondary aim was that by implementing a new idea and amending the knowledge to the organizational context that organizational learning will occur for participates involved in the implementation process. Rationale: This paper details the implementation of a set of Key performance indicators (KPI) at two mental health day hospitals. A set of KPI’s is a tool used to provide core measurements of service functioning and well-being. These measures provide indications that a service may not be operating within the norms or the strategic aims of an organization and that further analysis is required. KPI’s are complimentary to other organizational mechanisms of service monitoring such as clinical audit, service user feedback, staff wellbeing questionnaires and incident reporting systems. Change process: Using the HSE change model a group of staff amended the KPI to mental health context. Evaluation: To evaluate the KPI usefulness to mental health context, the degree of belief in the KPIs was assessed using an adapted questionnaire. To capture organizational learning relating to the implementation process, a focus group was used. Result: The questionnaire demonstrated a high degree of belief in the use of KPIs by key stakeholders within the organizations. The focus group identified three themes that validated learning from the implementation process. Conclusion: The implementation of the KPIs at two mental health day hospitals was confirmed as useful to a group of key stakeholder within the management structure. The high degree of belief in the KPIs and its application to the mental health day hospital context was proven. Also, organizational learning was found to occur in the form of single loop learning. Single loop learning is the learning of new knowledge or amending of new knowledge to the context that had no impact on the organizational systems in place. The understanding gained from the single loop learning will help the implementation group to use the organizational systems such as the HSE change model more efficiently in the future without changing the organizational system itself. An anecdotal finding suggests that double loop learning may have occurred. Double-loop learning occurs when new knowledge or knowledge amended to context occurs that has changed the organizational systems in place. In the evaluation of key stakeholder’s belief in KPIs, it was found that the stakeholder will use the KPIs in decision making. Using the information provided by the KPIs in organizational decision making along with changes to data collection and aggregation of reporting practices one could say that the amended notion of KPI has had an organizational impact and therefore could be classed as double looping learning though more longitudinal evaluation would be required to add strength to these findings.