Constructing of indicators system for evaluating organizational performance of centers for disease control and prevention

Objectives: Public health has been paid considerable attention after SARS crisis in China. Many experts ascribed SARS crisis to be lacking of enough investment to public health system for a long term. Governments had put huge investment into the construction of public health system since SARS. However, could only sufficient physical investment naturally make the public health system produce the ideal outcomes and satisfy the expectation of the public and government?  To answer these questions, the performance of public health system should be considered and measured objectively. This article aims to explore and establish indicators system to evaluate the public health organizational performance, which is the first effort to establish performance measurement on CDC’s organizational performance with BSC in China.
Methods: Conceptual framework of indicators system is based on the balanced scorecard (BSC), which is a useful management and performance tool widely applied in companies and now gradually used by public sectors. The hierarchical framework of indicators system contains three level and four dimensions. Crude indicators bank is established and these indicators derive from literature review, brain storming and expert’s opinions. Then 3 rounds modified Delphi is carried out. 30 Experts are comprised of government officials, health executives, professionals of CDCs and researchers from university. This indicators system eventually is constructed based on data analysis. Each indicator is weighed.        
Results: This indicators system consist of three levels, four dimensions and fifty indicators, and concrete indicator’s definition, weight, calculation and data sources have been reported.
Conclusions:  Primary performance evaluation indicators system has been established. Test on reliability and validity of indicators system will be conducted in further research.
Key words:  performance measurement, balanced scorecard (BSC), organizational performance, public health organization

This research funded by National Natural Scientific Foundation of China (No. 70673018)