Benchmarking

Benchmarking

Benchmarking: It’s All About Performance

Anne Watkins Published: 25 Apr 2018

Benchmarking in tending offers a sensible approach of measure and scrutiny services.

It will facilitate improve performance, set standards of excellence and determine gaps in learning.

So how is it done?

What is Benchmarking?

Benchmarking may be a powerful management tool that was originally developed to keep up high standards in business.

Although a comparatively new initiative for several tending organizations, benchmarks are currently chop-chop gaining recognition as a great tool to assist ‘shine a light’ on vital areas of nursing (Hospice UK 2017).

It’s the method of building a high commonplace of excellence by frequently scrutiny tending services with best practices from different establishments.

One of the nice benefits of benchmarking is its ability to specific nursing specialties. From acute to semi permanent care, health promotion and self-care, through to pain management and pressure ulcers, benchmarking can be successfully applied to almost any clinical specialty.

Whilst it’s necessary to differentiate between ‘best practices benchmarking’ and ‘peer benchmarking’, Torchy-Tardy (2012) notes that a key characteristic of all benchmarking is that it’s a part of a comprehensive and participative policy of continuous quality improvement.

According to the Royal College of Nursing (2014), 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 organizations to create a spirit of competition and apply best practices.

Using benchmarks provides nursing groups a comparatively simple thanks to establish practices wherever performance may well be improved, or wherever new initiatives will be introduced to assist raise standards of care.

Key to this is a willingness to share information and compare outcomes with other peer organizations.

Advantages of Benchmarking Include:

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 2014)

Defining the Scope of Practice

One of the key advantages of benchmarking is that it will facilitate overcome resistance to vary by lightness other ways of determination issues.

Learning from others and sharing knowledge of what has worked well during benchmarking can go a long way to making the task more manageable. To make the process easier many hospitals publish their own benchmarking guidelines.

For example, NHS Wales (2018) offers the subsequent pointers to assist establish the scope of follow for a typical clinical benchmarking project.

Regularly comparing functions or processes with best practice

Identifying where performance could be improved

Seeking contemporary views and ideas to bring on enhancements in performance

Following up by implementing improvements

Monitoring progress and reviewing the benefits

Teamwork is Essential

To work well, benchmarking needs to be a team process.

As a part of the aim of benchmarking is to lift standards, it’s likely that the outcomes may involve changes to current practices. This means that the consequences of modification may well be felt throughout the whole clinical team and presumably 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 disposition to share smart follow is additionally essential. Without it benchmarking cannot even begin.

This is why benchmarking isn’t simply Associate in Nursing 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, Torchy-Tardy (2012) recommends a 9-step model, whilst the Royal College of Nursing (2014) expands this to a 12-step model.

Both share key similarities with other organizations and include the following steps:

Select the service or activity to be improved

Gather expert input and identify benchmarking partners

Identify measurement factors

Identify the competitive gap by scrutiny against benchmarks of best follow

Design a scoring method and score current practice

Set future performance targets

Communicate the benchmarking results

Develop action plans and implement changes

Monitor progress, update and re-score.

All of those steps are engineered round 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 perhaps wanting on the far side the tending business to find out from different service industries too.

Improving the standard and effectiveness of care may be a key aim for all practitioners, despite clinical specialty, or size of the department, and sharing smart follow is one amongst 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 add significantly to the workload, it can 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.