Table 1 Inclusion/Exclusion Criteria and Search Strategy for PubMed

Population

Health care organization which offers a primary, secondary, or tertiary health care or medical services such as (clinics, entire hospitals, or hospital's department), without restriction to the ownership or administrative type

Laboratories, pharmacies, biobanks, radiology departments, hospice homes and medical education centers, unless they were department or unit in the previously included institution types

hospitals[MeSH Terms]

hospital department[MeSH Terms]

health[MeSH Terms]

Intervention

Performance assessment of health care organizations through explicitly implementing BSC, or implicitly assessing the perspectives described in the initial BSC design [6]

Studies which explicitly used other TQM tools such as the MBNQA, ISO, SQA, six-sigma, etc

"quality indicators, health care"[MeSH Terms]

scorecard*[Text Word]

"score card*"[Text Word]

Outcome

Full reporting of indicators measurements or values

No reporting or partially reporting of indicators measurements or values

patient satisfaction[MeSH Terms]

cost–benefit analysis[MeSH Terms]

health care costs[MeSH Terms]

Hospital personnel management[MeSH Terms]

staff development[MeSH Terms]

knowledge management[MeSH Terms]

efficiency, organizational[MeSH Terms]

Study design

All study designs

_

No limitation regarding study design, type or time was set in the search strategy