Benefits of benchmarking in Healthcare System

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Benefits of Benchmarking in Health Care System
Benchmarking is one of the common concepts used in contemporary healthcare. It involves comparing specific organizational outcomes and processes against another organization (Ettorchi-Tardy et al.). Benchmarking can also be identified as creating a standard of excellence and comparing different organizational processes or activities. It falls under total quality management and should be recognized as a quality program and not a replacement method. Healthcare experts should be competent with different types of benchmarking, including generic, functional, competitive, and internal benchmarking. Benchmarking should be a team-based process to implement the outcomes and recommendations collectively. The significant aspects considered during benchmarking in the healthcare system include knowledge and skills. Most experts focus on different elements during benchmarking to identify the extent of goal achievement, including value chain, balanced scorecards, and dashboards. The paper probes the benefits and obstacles of benchmarking and the use of balanced scorecards, dashboards, and value chains.
Benefits of Benchmarking
Benchmarking comprises effective healthcare systems depending on the type of benchmark initiated. Benchmarking may benefit an organization directly or indirectly. The benefits are summarized as follows:
* Benchmarking improves quality standards in healthcare: Healthcare organizations that use benchmarking in their systems embrace quality standards by comparing different processes to identify strengths and weaknesses (Ettorchi-Tardy et al.). Therefore, it creates room for adjustment through effective action plans. Different stakeholders constitute the healthcare system, and through benchmarking, they can understand the quality direction of the organization and improvement areas.
* Benchmarking enhances Knowledge sharing: The functional type of benchmarking promotes leadership recognition in healthcare. It does not necessarily mean that benchmarks are conducted in the same industry. Therefore, through their leadership, health organizations can share different expertise through the interaction of the best performers. For example, a hospital contains different guest relations and room scheduling functions. The leaders in these areas can gain experience from the hospitality industry, such as hotels and restaurants. Therefore, benchmarking impacts the healthcare systems positively.
* Benchmarking is used to improve healthcare performance: Benchmarking involves comparing different processes. Therefore, it allows the health experts to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the organizational activities or processes. Through the help of quality managers, the organization implements specific actions to convert the weaknesses to strengths and curb any arising challenges. For example, an organization may implement a particular target that the healthcare organization should meet based on benchmark outcomes.
* Benchmarking is used to set performance metrics in the healthcare system: Performance is a crucial indicator in health care, and it determines whether the organization is headed in the right direction or not. Benchmarking establishes key performance metrics since it focuses on the weaknesses and strengths of the organizational processes. The metrics are used to identify critical faults in the healthcare systems and recommendations for better actions.
Obstacles to the Use of Benchmarking
Benchmarking comprises specific perquisites, including openness and commitment from upper management. The experts consider the identified elements in choosing and implementing the benchmark programs. Therefore many obstacles can hinder the implementation process, including:
* The illusion of uniqueness and excessive internal focus: Excessive internal focus limits openness, which is crucial for benchmarking. Healthcare organizations that consider themselves extremely unique and not ready to interact may not learn due to lack of interaction (HKT Consultant). Benchmarking is all about allowing room for interaction and learning. For instance, an organization that believes that they provide the highest quality medical services will find it unnecessary to interact with one lower. Therefore, the illusion of uniqueness and internal focus the capacity to implement the benchmark program.
* Lack of Information: Information is key to any benchmarking program in healthcare. Adequate information acquisition makes the benchmarking process successful (Ettorchi-Tardy et al.). A team with insufficient information on medical processes and patient needs finds it easy to interact during the benchmark. However, limited information or inadequate access hinders benchmark. For example, learning reduces whenever two healthcare teams interact, and one team has adequately collected while the other team has limited data. Therefore, limited information is a barrier to successful benchmarking.
* Poor Team Composition: Team composition is mandatory for implementing the benchm...