IT IN HELTHCARE (DENTISTRY) AS ONE OF MAIN FACTORS IN IMPROVING QUALITY OF LIFE: BALANCED SCORECARD APPROACH

The main purpose of this article is to investigate non-evident relationship between IT penetration in medical clinics and patients’ quality of life (QOL) improvement. The research was done for private dentistry field of health care industry of Russia, as one of the most saturated with IT and fast growing. By IT penetration we understand the degree of using the most popular IT in dental clinics: practice management systems (PMS), imaging systems, diagnostic equipment, connected to LANs and WANs, mobile applications, Internet. Cause-and-effect relations between quality of treatment and IT penetration were first revealed for practice management software, diagnostic equipment and imaging software. The metrics of balanced scorecard (BSC) for dentistry was used to show, how IT helps to manage clinic, and, as a consequence, improve patients’ treatment results, their overall satisfaction, oral health indicators. Clinic’s status assessment was accomplished regarding traditional 4 BSC perspectives: financial, patients care, personnel improvement, and business processes justification (Kaplan and Norton, 1996). Statistical data of key performance indicators (KPI), construed in accordance with BSC approach, were obtained from practice management software system “Dental for Windows” (Australian company “Centaur Software” made, and localized for Russian market since 1997) (www.centaursoftware.com, www.d4w.ru).