You Can Know What You Don’t Know: How are we doing?

Continuing my series offering best practices and tips to address the many challenges executives at health centers face, this month I am addressing the topic of key performance indicators.

I hear it all the time.  How do we compare to “the benchmarks”, Karl? How do we know if our results are “right”?  I think it’s important to let “industry” benchmarks inform an assessment of your organization, but I do not think that industry data on a stand-alone basis is the only guiding light to follow.  Metrics mean something different for everybody. Everybody has different goals, values, positioning initiatives, and they are all in different places within a business’s life cycle.  

With that in mind, I encourage organizations to assess what are your goals?  Is hitting a certain benchmark the endgame? Why are you striving for a certain benchmark?  Is it for a financing? Hitting that goal will be a litmus test for hitting another benchmark? Will achieving a certain benchmark allow you to invest in a new program?  Those are the questions to be asking. Are you achieving those goals?

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