Benchmarking in healthcare offers a practical way of measuring and comparing services.
It can help improve performance, set standards of excellence and identify gaps in learning.
So, how is it done?
What is Benchmarking?
Benchmarking is a powerful management tool that was originally developed to maintain high standards in industry.
Although a relatively new initiative for many healthcare organisations, benchmarks are now rapidly gaining recognition as a useful tool to help ‘shine a light’ on critical areas of nursing (Hospice UK 2017).
It’s the process of establishing a high standard of excellence by regularly comparing healthcare services with best practices from other institutions.
One of the great advantages of benchmarking is its adaptability to certain nursing specialties. From acute to long-term care, health promotion and self-care, through to pain management and pressure ulcers, benchmarking can be successfully applied to almost any clinical speciality.
Whilst it’s important to differentiate between 'best practices benchmarking' and 'peer benchmarking', Ettorchi-Tardy (2012) notes that a key characteristic of all benchmarking is that it’s part of a comprehensive and participative policy of continuous quality improvement.
According to the Royal College of Nursing (2017), benchmarking theory is built primarily on performance comparison and gap identification. Or, to put it another way, it’s a form of quality assurance using active collaboration between organisations to create a spirit of competition and apply best practices.
Using benchmarks gives nursing teams a relatively easy way to identify practices where performance could be improved or where new initiatives could be introduced to help raise standards of care.
Key to this is a willingness to share information and compare outcomes with other peer organisations.
Advantages of Benchmarking
Providing a systematic approach to the assessment of practice
Promoting reflective practice
Providing an avenue for change in clinical practice
Ensuring pockets of innovative practice are not wasted
Reducing repetition of effort and resources
Reducing fragmentation and geographical variations in care
Providing evidence for additional resources.
(RCN 2017)
Defining the Scope of Practice
One of the key benefits of benchmarking is that it can help overcome resistance to change by highlighting alternative ways of solving problems.
Learning from others and sharing knowledge of what has worked well during benchmarking can go a long way in making the task more manageable. To make the process easier, many hospitals publish their own benchmarking guidelines.
For example, NHS Wales (2018) offers the following guidelines to help identify the scope of practice for a typical clinical benchmarking project:
Regularly compare functions or processes with best practice
Identify where performance could be improved
Seek fresh views and ideas to bring about improvements in performance
Follow up by implementing improvements
Monitor progress and review the benefits.
Teamwork is Essential
To work well, benchmarking needs to be a team process.
As part of the purpose of benchmarking is to raise standards, it’s likely that the outcomes may involve changes to current practices. This means that the effects of change could be felt throughout the entire clinical team and possibly extend throughout the department.
So, for benchmarking to be successful, it needs to be a team process with understanding and support for any potential changes that may lie ahead.
The willingness to share good practice is also essential. Without it, benchmarking cannot even begin.
This is why benchmarking isn’t just an activity for managers. Nurses and midwives at every level of seniority play a vital role in ensuring that their healthcare facility is a leader in meeting national benchmark standards.
Continuous Quality Improvement
In recent years, benchmarks have also developed into a valuable quality assurance tool that can easily be adapted for use in a wide variety of healthcare environments.
Many different benchmarking models exist. For example, Ettorchi-Tardy (2012) recommends a 9-step model, whilst the Royal College of Nursing (2017) expands this to a 12-step model.
Both share key similarities with other organisations and include the following steps:
Selecting the service or activity to be improved
Gathering expert input and identifying benchmarking partners
Identifying measurement factors
Identifying the competitive gap by comparing against benchmarks of best practice
Designing a scoring method and scoring current practice
Setting future performance targets
Communicating the benchmarking results
Developing action plans and implementing changes
Monitoring progress, updating and re-scoring.
All of these steps are built around the four core principles of benchmarking that are relevant to nursing (York 2015):
Maintaining quality
Improving customer satisfaction
Improving patient safety
Continuous improvement.
Sower (2007) goes further by suggesting that benchmarking should not just involve comparing your hospital with national averages - it should also involve looking at best-in-class hospitals and finding out what they do, or even looking beyond the healthcare industry to learn from other service industries too.
Improving the quality and effectiveness of care is a key aim for all practitioners, regardless of clinical speciality or size of the department, and sharing good practice is one of the best ways to achieve this.
Benefits of Shared Benchmarking Across Institutions and Across Countries
Allows for a sharing of knowledge and experience
Promotes contacts and networks
Identifies gaps between current practice and ‘good practice’
Brings an external focus to an internal review
Improves decision-making through referencing comparative data
Helps to demystify and encourage change
Can lead to the identification of new ideas and innovative approaches.
(University of Tasmania 2018)
Whilst most benchmarking projects involve comparisons with other local or national institutions, some practitioners go further by seeking international comparisons.
Although this can significantly add to the workload, it may also broaden learning and lead to a greater sharing of good practice and further quality improvements.
The benefits of international comparisons are also strongly endorsed by Agarwal et al. (2016), who used benchmarking to explore the quality of management practices of public hospitals in the Australian healthcare system alongside seven other countries, including the UK.
Eiff (2015) also endorses the benefits of international comparisons, stating that hospitals worldwide are facing the same opportunities and threats.
The demographics of an ageing population, steady increases in chronic disease and severe illness, and a steadily increasing demand for medical services all pose universal healthcare challenges. Yet, Eiff also urges caution, suggesting that making comparisons without 'looking behind the figures' can limit the quality and reliability of findings.
Reputations Count
Bevan (2018) takes this inherent desire to share good practice a step further, suggesting that part of the motivation for benchmarking is the need to maintain a good reputation.
Drawing on research conducted in Italy and the UK, it has been shown that benchmarking can improve poor performance through naming and shaming, and enhance good performance through competitive benchmarking and peer learning.
Conclusion
Benchmarking can be a valuable technique for quickly lifting the performance of an organisation.
It’s not only about auditing practice to ensure high clinical standards - it’s also a way of supporting open comparison and sharing information to allow continuous improvement and development (Kay 2007).
Without a doubt, nurses in all specialties are being challenged to adapt to the changing demands of healthcare.
With this comes the need to provide cost-effective, highly efficient, quality patient care, and benchmarking is one of the tools that can be used to achieve this.
Topics
References
Agarwal, R, Green, R, Agarwal, N & Randhawa, K 2016, 'Benchmarking Management Practices in Australian Public Healthcare', Journal of Health Organisation and Management, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 31-56, viewed 18 July 2024, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26964848
Eiff, W 2015, 'International Benchmarking and Best Practice Management: In Search of Health Care and Hospital Excellence', Advanced Healthcare Management, vol. 17, pp. 223-52, viewed 18 July 2024, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25985514
Ettorchi-Tardy, A, Levif, M & Michel, P 2012, 'Benchmarking: A Method for Continuous Quality Improvement in Health', Healthcare Policy, vol. 7, no. 4, e. 101-119, viewed 18 July 2024, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3359088/