Library & Knowledge Services: Benchmarking

What is Benchmarking?

Benchmarking is the systematic and continuous process of establishing a standard of excellence and internally and/or externally comparing performance to identify, achieve, and sustain best practice.

Benchmarking requires measuring and evaluating current data, processes, and/or performance and comparing with similar data from other organizations, including leading best-practice facilities in an area.

Benchmarking yields data, not solutions.

Benchmarking is guided by a philosophy of continuous quality improvement and ongoing learning.

Benchmarking is part of quality improvement programs, not as a replacement.

Benchmarking may be part of a larger environmental scan, which includes not only the benchmarking information, but also a systematic and objective review of the research evidence (research literature and grey literature, including best practice guidelines and professional standards), and stakeholder perspectives.

 

Why Benchmark?

• to understand trends and factors for successful practices in other settings
• to learn from challenges or pitfalls experienced elsewhere
• to establish or build a professional network
• to inform quality improvement strategies and decision-making

 

Types of Benchmarking

Two main types of benchmarking can be used to evaluate patient safety and quality performance:

Internal

Competitive or External

Used to identify or compare best practices or processes within an organization, and to compare current practice over time.   May help to identify, document, standardize and replicate best practices and performance across an organization. Transferring practice is likely to be easier from internal benchmarking; however, the learning potential is generally far less than external benchmarking.   May be a precursor to external benchmarking.

Uses comparative data between organizations to judge performance and identify improvements that have proven successful in other organizations. Transferring practices may be difficult depending on the comparison organization, but the potential is greater to identify world class or best practices.

Topics for Benchmarking

Benchmarking projects are typically based on one or more of the following topics: 

• Processes: discrete work processes and operating systems (e.g. flow of patients in a clinic)
• Product or service: may be carried out independently by consumer magazines, public surveys. Often done by trialling and comparing them.
• Performance: outcome characteristics, quantifiable (e.g. surgical wait times)
• Strategic: assessment of strategic rather than operational matters (e.g. top strategic priorities)

 

Before You Begin

Think about your purpose

• What perceived area of weakness or gap (area for improvement) are you trying to address? How has this been measured within the organization? 
• What is the ultimate goal of gathering this information? What do you hope to achieve with this information? 

Identify the best person from within the team to perform the benchmarking

• Who is the right person/role from within the organization to get the right information? 
• This may vary depending on the topic. It may be helpful to designate someone to perform benchmarking from outside the program/department who may have an unbiased or more objective perspective, or it may be necessary for a subject matter expert or someone knowledgeable in the area of clinical care to perform benchmarking.
• A project team may be involved in benchmarking with some team members performing benchmarking and others focusing on a literature review. 

Ensure commitment to the project by the management team/leaders with whom you will share this data. This will increase the chance that benchmarking will result in the desired improvement within your organization.

Limit the scope of the questions to a well-defined issue. Do not ask about everything you have ever wanted to know, but rather be targeted and focused in your questions so you can collect useful and meaningful data. Define the beginning and ending of the benchmark (process, product, service, activity, or performance) you wish to understand.  

Think about the intended audience for this information. With whom will you share this? How does this affect what information you need to gather?

Involve stakeholders to gain consensus about the focus for the benchmarking (e.g. garner input on key questions to ask) 

Plan for how this fits into the broader environmental scan, which includes gathering other evidence such as research literature, grey literature. 

Use a systematic process (consistent steps) for each data source. 

 

The Steps

1. Identify the practice or service to be improved

2. Determine key questions. This may include but is not limited to the following

• Please provide a general description of a certain process, care delivery model, or performance standard
• What has been successful in delivering care, meeting a performance standard, or fulfilling a strategic aim?
• What has made the organization/service area so successful in this practice? 
• How has the organization measured success of the particular practice or service? 
• What gaps or challenges have arisen in providing this service or meeting this performance standard?
• How has the challenge been addressed?
• Characteristics about the organization (e.g. population served, partnership with academic institutions, provincial/regional mandate, number of patient beds, number of a particular procedure performed per year, number of healthcare providers, sources of funding). This data may help in determining similarities across organizations.

3. Identify comparable hospitals/organizations (reference points).

• Consider organizations who are the “world class performers”
• Consider organizations who are similar to your own organization in terms of population served, academic partnerships, provincial/regional mandate, size (e.g. number of beds, number of staff)
• Identify the right person to contact within the organization:
  • Personal introduction to the person or department of interest is the preferred method of contact
  • Contact through an interest group: an interest group or professional association is the next most likely approach to finding the right person to contact
  • Contact the appropriate manager/leader: if the above methods do not yield the right person, contact the appropriate department head or program manager. The organization website or organization switchboard should provide direction to find the right person.

4. Collect and organize the data*.

• *See C&W Benchmarking template for data collection spreadsheet.
• This may include contacting other organizations in any of the following ways:
  • Public domain: reviewing websites, publications or other documentation from external organizations or services.
  • One-to-one: phone calls, emails, or surveys to key content experts within other organizations.
• Ask follow up questions to understand what has fostered success and how challenges are navigated in other organizations.
• Summarize back to the person you speak with to ensure you have captured the information accurately.
• Get permission to share information you have collected if you intend to share it outside of your organization.
• Get the person’s direct contact information and ask permission to follow up in case further questions arise. Offer your contact information as well and offer to share back the results of your findings from the benchmarking.

 

What to do with the information?

1. Organize the information as you collect it in a systematic format (see Benchmarking Template document)  
   • An electronic spreadsheet is the most common and has the advantage of easily sorting and filtering the information.
   • If multiple people are collecting data simultaneously, then a document sharing platform is recommended (e.g. teamsite, Google docs) so that a single document can be easily shared and maintained.
   • Summarize what you have heard and what you notice about the findings as you go. This will help you in forming an analysis and synthesis of the information upon completion.
2. Analyze the data and compare your organization’s data to others’ practices and outcomes
   • Review the information you have gathered and identify key themes that emerge.  
     • Are there commonalities across organizations?  
     • What are the main differences? 
     • For practices that are successful, what made them successful?  
     • What is transferrable to your practice context? 
   • Consider your data in the context of the larger environmental scan (research literature, grey literature) 
3. Translate the knowledge gained (this step may occur before or after Step 4)
   • Summarize findings to share with others within your organization.
   • Engage others in making meaning of the data.
   • Consider organizing a forum or workshop to raise awareness, provide an opportunity to reflect on the data and apply findings within the organization’s context.
4. Make recommendations based on a philosophy of organizational learning and continuous quality improvement (no blame culture)  
5. Communicate the results. Report to stakeholders and decision-makers by writing a document and/or creating a slide presentation of the findings and recommendations in a clear and concise format 
6. Develop action plans based on the intended improvement 
7. Monitor progress. Review performance/processes regularly and recalibrate as needed

 

Tools

These tools are available to assist you with planning and organizing the benchmarking data:

• C&W Benchmarking template for data collection spreadsheet
• Benchmarking Planning Worksheet