An Educational Program with a Balanced Scorecard and Performance Measures Development in Workshop for Good Laboratory Management

Japanese Association of Clinical Laboratory Physicians has launched a program, Workshop for Good Laboratory Management, as a professional course in 1993. This program is designed for clinical laboratory physicians who wish to learn the full range of skills needed to implement an effective and strategic management.

In the program, we have recently introduced a seminar on balanced scorecard/performance measurement methodology and case-oriented exercises of small-group scorecard and measures development. The balanced scorecard is an approach to management system that would enable laboratories to clarify the strategies to translate them into action.

The management of laboratory is viewed from four perspectives (learning and growth, business process, customer, and financial) to develop metrics, collect data and analyze it. Recognizing and analyzing the weaknesses and the strength of current management of laboratory, the balanced scorecard approach would provide a clear prescription as to what ones should measure in order to 'balance' with the financial perspective. Based on the strategies and their targets, action plans are made concrete.

In expert lectures on the methodology during the course of 2006, 26 participants learnt about the concept and theory of it, and in the following small group exercise, they realized how it could be applied to the current issues of laboratory management in their own hospitals.

Hayato Miyachi, M.D. and Mikio Mori, M.D. Japanese Association of Clinical Laboratory Physicians

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