Brigham and Women?s Hospital

Brigham and Women's Hospital's Balanced Scorecard has become its "source of truth," taking its commitment to performance improvement to the next level, and strengthening its delivery of safe, high-quality patient care.

Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) is a 747-bed nonprofit teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School, located in Boston, Massachusetts, and a founding member of the Partners Healthcare System. BWH is a leading academic medical center with a commitment to patient care, research innovation, and medical education. BWH cares for almost 800,000 patients a year at its main hospital campus, at Faulkner Hospital and 2 community health centers. With over $2B in net patient revenues, the hospital has 13,000+ employees, of which 2,000+ are staff physicians and 2,800+ are registered nurses. BWH was ranked 11th in the most recent U.S. News and World Report America's Best Hospitals list, and awarded the 13th annual National Quality Healthcare Award in 2006.

"What I find most powerful about the BSC framework is the ability to show all the key metrics to a wide range of audiences - like my department Chairs - so that they know what are the important goals and measures to track. We have adopted total transparency of the BSC system with our Board of Trustees - giving several members direct VPN access to the system from their homes. We also incorporate 'live' review of key service, safety, and efficiency metrics in the BSC system into the monthly Board-level quality committee, and subsequently bring a summary of these measures to the full Board each quarter... Although it is impossible to tease out cause and effect from almost any performance management system, I do praise our BSC system for helping to create a culture of data transparency and increased accountability."

Dr. Gary Gottlieb, CEO