The box score enables us to evidence sustained improvements in a way we couldn’t before" Team Member, NHS Forth Valley
Box score
Build your box score
If you are already familiar with box scores, access a range of resources to support you to build your box score.
Why use a box score?
The box score offers a method for continuous Value Management by capturing data at the point of care delivery.
It helps teams, frontline managers and leaders to understand the performance of their services and the relationships between their performance, capacity and cost data. As a result, teams are able to test and implement changes that improve the value of their service.
The box score is a core element of the Value Management approach and what makes it different from traditional quality improvement.
Collecting and displaying data over time can help to identify where to focus improvement work and can show when an idea is working or not.
Find out how to tell if a change is resulting in improvement.
What is the Value Management box score?
The box score is an Excel spreadsheet that allows the team to measure progress.
The box score is essentially a dashboard that consists of three categories of metrics:
- performance measures across the domains of quality, safety and experience
- capacity measures so that teams understand the time available for patient care, and
- cost measures that address major non-fixed cost items within the control of the team.
Measures should be based on organisational and team priorities, and can be drawn from other quality improvement and quality assurance programmes such as the Scottish Patient Safety Programme, Access QI, Infection Prevention Control and Excellence in Care.
Using the box score
The Team Lead and Improvement Coach manage the process of populating the box score (with finance and data analyst support) and updating this on the visual management board.
In the first few weeks, successful teams get into a rhythm of full completion of the box score before the huddle. That means the team:
- updates all performance measures consistently,
- conducts capacity measurement at least once every 6-8 weeks, and
- receives timely updates on comprehensive financial measures.