Key Performance Indicators in Field Hospital Appraisal: A Systematic Review

Background: Field hospitals are health care institutions with mobile or fixed structures. Although there have been numerous models and indicators for assessing the performance of public hospitals, there is no model to evaluate the performance of field hospitals. Objectives: This study was aimed at determining key performance indicators in field hospital appraisal. Methods: In this study, we conducted a systematic review of publications in English or Persian language indexed by PubMed, Scopus, Emerald, Elsevier, Ovid, Google Scholar, Springer, ProQuest, WHO and Word Bank databases. PICO strategy was used for searching databases. Quality assessment of the publications were carried out using CASP checklist. Similarly, the preferred reporting items for PRISMA checklist were used to assess systematic reviews. The PRISMA checklist was used to guide the reporting of the systematic review. A descriptive summary with data tables was produced to summarize the literature. Following the results of our search, 592 publications were retrieved and 352 citations were excluded because of irrelevance or duplication. After excluding the duplicate and irrelevant items we screened 240 titles and abstracts. Two independent reviewers evaluated 240 potentially relevant studies, and 15 records met the criteria to be included in this review. Results: We found 13 criteria on the assessment of field hospital in the literature. We classified all the retrieved indicators according to the system approach. The results of this study showed that input indicators included 4 indicators, process indicators included 2 indicators, output indicators consisted of 4 indicators and outcome indicators involved 3 indicators. Conclusions: This study highlights the most important performance measurement indicators in field hospitals with a system approach. There was no model to assess the field hospitals; however, a systematic approach in assessment can improve the quality of services.