Key performance indicators

Our client was an NHS Hospital Trust that provides acute care services to over half a million people.  The Trust had ambitions to set up autonomous business units, but did not have a firm grasp of how the revenues and costs consumed, and the activities of the staff, related to the volume and ‘mix’ of services it provided to its various clients.  Data were therefore inadequate for the purposes of managerial controls. 

Our task was to understand the revenues, and the drivers of activity and costs of the current services, so that a ‘baseline’ could be drawn, and informed decisions made about Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) to measure achievement of the executives. 

We began by examining fully the work that was done and studied data on revenues, cost, volume, service level and efficiency that were already available.  But we also collected primary data.  These data helped us to relate inputs (revenue, people, marginal and capital costs) to its outputs and suggest KPI’s that measured effectively the efficiency and productivity of the service offered.

The result of our analysis was an evidence base which the Trust could use to implement appropriate managerial controls.  They were able to understand the true costs of the work they did.  They could see where the efforts of the staff were directed appropriately to activities that add value.  And they could set targets for improvement that were based on actual, rather than estimated, levels of performance.

Please contact us to find out more.