Covid-19 impacts development of new HSE national scorecard

The development of a new national scorecard (NSC) for the HSE should reflect issues arising from the current Covid-19 pandemic, according to the HSE’s performance and delivery committee. The issue was discussed during a meeting of the committee on 19 June, the minutes of which were seen by the Medical Independent through Freedom of Information legislation.

It was noted that the pandemic had “interrupted the work” on the development of a new national scorecard. The committee reviewed the existing content of the NSC and national performance indicator suite
from the HSE’s national service plan 2020. The gaps and deficits in current NSC content and areas for development beyond the existing national performance indicator suite were discussed by the committee, which noted various metrics which they considered to be important.

These included areas not currently captured under “workforce, potential for streamlining data collection, and the inclusion of external data”.
According to the minutes: “The committee considered how best the need for a new NSC could be aligned with the strategic framework for service continuity in a Covid environment; nine priority areas identified for ‘recovery planning and transformation’; the strategic priorities and goals from corporate plan, and the work the Department of Health is doing to develop a health systems performance assessment framework (HPSA) for Ireland.”

Following the discussion, it was decided that the Office of the Chief Operations Officer should engage with all board and committee members to gain insight into what should be included in the NSC and guide the development process.

“The aspects of the NSC to be considered as part of this engagement would include consideration of which aspects of the current NSC are fit for purpose, how the NSC should be revised with regards to domains and KPI, whether any performance indicators are missing, resumption of service in a Covid environment, and potential alignment of KPI/scorecards being progressed through other committees of the board,” the minutes stated.
It was agreed that the output of this engagement would be reported at the next committee meeting.