Introduction
In recent years, performance monitoring has gained increasing attention as a tool for evaluating the delivery of personal health care services and for examining population-based activities addressing the health of the public. This attention to performance monitoring is related to several factors, including concerns about ensuring the efficient and effective use of health care dollars in providing high-quality care and achieving the best possible health outcomes. Also contributing are a wider recognition that the health of the population depends on many factors beyond medical care and heightened concern about accountability for use of resources and whether desired results have been achieved.
An interest in understanding how monitoring the activities performed by health care and public health agencies and organizations might contribute to improving the health of entire communities is the basis of a study by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Committee on Using Performance Monitoring to Improve Community Health. The study is being funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The Committee's Charge
The committee was asked to examine how performance monitoring can be used to promote improvements in community health. In particular, the committee was asked to consider the roles that public health and personal health care systems and other stakeholders play in influencing community-wide health, how their performance in connection with health improvement goals can be monitored, and how a performance monitoring system can be used to foster collaboration among these sectors and promote improvements in community health.
