Integrated Assessment of Performance and Ranking of Surgical Departments of the Regional Multidisciplinary Hospital

Background: Effective healthcare management requires the introduction of new mechanisms for financial incentives. Domestic and international researchers offer various sets of performance indicators; however, a unified approach that allows comparison of different departments and entire hospital networks has not been developed.

Objective: To develop a scientifically based methodology for the integrated assessment of the performance efficiency and ranking of surgical departments, accounting for their differences and features.

Materials and methods: A set of research methods was employed, including organizational, analytical, statistical methods, interviewing, expert evaluation methods, and mathematical processing methods. To calculate the integrated indicator for assessing the quality and efficiency of surgical departments, performance indicators from hospital department reports for 2023–2024 were used. The object of the study was the largest multidisciplinary state budgetary healthcare institution in the Volga Federal District of Samara Regional Clinical Hospital named after V.D. Seredavina has a capacity of 1850 beds and staff of over 3500 employees. Key indicators of the integrated assessment of departments were divided into four groups: bed capacity utilization indicators, indicators of the treatment and diagnostic process, indicators of work in information systems, and financial performance indicators. Comparison of departments of different profiles, in terms of types of surgical interventions, case mix and severity of hospitalized patients, was carried out using 5 coefficients of complexity of patient treatment, expert assessment of the significance of indicators, optimization of indicators, ensuring the correctness of information aggregation and calculating weighted standardized criteria.

Results: The highest integrated assessment score and first place in the ranking was obtained by the Ophthalmology department (15.0), second place was the Otorhinolaryngology department (14.7), followed in descending order by the department of Urology (13.4), Maxillofacial Surgery (13.3), Orthopedics No. 2 (12.8), Traumatology (12.3), Orthopedics No. 1 (11.5), Neurosurgery (9.8), Thoracic Surgery (9.3), General Surgery (9.0), and Vascular Surgery (8.3).

Conclusion: The practical application of the proposed methodology will, through the mathematical modeling of the integrated indicator, enable a comprehensive assessment of the performance not only of an individual structural unit of healthcare organization, but also of any general hospital, as well as entities within the healthcare system.

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