Designing a Strategy Map for Healthcare Centers with Balanced Scorecard Approach

Background: Due to the level of complexity of healthcare organizations, many factors play a role in improving health services. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a systematic approach to evaluate their efficiency and management system.  Balanced scorecard can play a role in this field as an evaluation system by examining the cause-and-effect relationship of goals and drawing a strategy map.  Therefore, the purpose of this research was to develop a strategy map for healthcare centers with a balanced scorecard approach. Methods: This was a qualitative and applied research conducted using mixed methods in 2019. The statistical population of the research included all health experts from medical sciences universities across the country, 15 of whom were selected based on a targeted snowball sampling. First, through the review of texts and articles related to the literature on the subject with a general search in foreign and domestic electronic databases, a list of balanced scorecard views and the goals related to health and treatment centers of comprehensive health service centers was identified. After that, through a researcher-made questionnaire, by asking experts their opinions using fuzzy Delphi method in 2 steps, the views and goals related to comprehensive health service centers were identified. Then, through the relationships of improved network analysis process technique based on DEMETEL, in 4 steps by Excel 2016 and Matlab 2014 software, the relationships between them were examined. Finally, the effect of goals and views on each other was determined, and a strategy map was drawn. Results: In this research, social responsibility, as a new perspective and the attitudes of patients and society, financial status and performance improvement, growth and development, and internal processes, replaced the main perspectives of the balanced scorecard, and social responsibility was designated as a new perspective. By examining the relationship between them, the perspectives of growth and development, intra-organizational processes, social responsibility, and other views were found to be effective. Conclusion: Considering the complexity of the activities regarding comprehensive health service centers, replacing the views appropriate to the comprehensive health service centers with the main views provided by Kaplan and Norton (2004) can obtain the best results regarding the goals and strategy. Based on the cause-effect relationship of views, strengthening views and effective goals creates value for effective goals. Investing on influential views and goals will empower and promote the development of balance between income and expense, and the optimal use of resources will improve the views of society and patients and the quality of services, which is the main goal of comprehensive health service centers.