Overview, History, and Objectives of Performance Measurement

This article provides an overview of health care performance measurement, including a chronological history of the major developments in the performance measurement field. It is not intended to be all-encompassing in its descriptions of events and organizations but, rather, its purpose is to provide a broad historical context for describing health care performance measurement activities of the past 50 years. The article also highlights the key constituents driving performance measurement (government payers, private sector regulators, business coalitions, health care providers, and health care consumers), how they have influenced what is measured (the content of performance measurement), and why. The article concludes by establishing the commonalities among constituents and forecasts what the foreseeable future may hold regarding performance measurement.