Question

Benchmarking activity in healthcare?

Clinical practice benchmarking?

Conclusion of benchmarking in healthcare?

Answer 1

1. Benchmarking in healthcare takes the performance metrics of a specific organization and compares them to a benchmark developed using information from other similar organizations. Since about 1985, the practice has been around in healthcare. Leaders use benchmarking to understand where a company is doing well against its peers, and where changes are required. Such data is generally used to define resources for advertising and change programs (ranks, etc.).

Historically, a few companies have dominated the healthcare benchmarking market, concentrating on very specific areas such as hospitalization, performance, doctor ranking / comparison, administrative benchmarking, and claim-based benchmarking. These solutions are usually inpatient-focused and use patient cohorts that may or may not be truly comparable to the patient population of a given organization (for example, the organization has younger patients with fewer comorbidities than the comparison data set). An entity will often have to send data to a benchmarking company and then wait for the tests to be delivered. Once the organisation's benchmark information is available, it will need to rely on in-house skillsets to look at various benchmarks to find opportunities for improvement by integrating that information with a knowledge base. Moving to the stage of the change plan can be a heavy burden.

2. Essential to the success of any benchmarking is the underlying trust that all concerned will be consistent with their approach, thereby ensuring the data produced. This is important if the importance of benchmarking in local and national education is to be achieved.
Benchmarking is a team process as the outcome may involve changing current practices throughout the organization with the engagement needed. The group should include colleagues with expert knowledge of the topic in question, in this case a medical expertise; skills to interrogate the input data as well as benchmarking documents and, of course, oversight of clinical leadership.

Everybody interested in benchmarking knows it's important but not easy. Internally, realizing that no part of your organization falls behind the rest is critical. Inside, it's important to understand how you're doing those in the market. And from a practical or standard viewpoint, it's important to look beyond the company or industry similarities to see how you can benefit from a specific process.