Benchmarking applied to health care

An operational definition of benchmarking as developed at Xerox is "finding and implementing best practices." Although benchmarking has widely spread throughout industry, it is only just beginning to find application in health care.

In internal benchmarking, similar internal functions serve as pilot sites for conducting benchmarking. Competitive benchmarking, the comparison of a work process with that of the best competitor, reveals the performance measure levels to be surpassed. Functional benchmarking compares a work function to that of the functional leader. Generic process benchmarking compares the organization's basic business processes.

Benchmarking can target business, support, and clinical functions. For clinical functions, there are many potential, ready-made networks of people with similar problems and interests. Benchmarking support functions is often difficult because these functions can provide the greatest competitive edge in the purely business sense.

The ten-step Xerox benchmarking model is illustrated with a fictional case study involving improvement in the work processes associated with outpatient and inpatient biopsies.

The principles of benchmarking are simple, and the benchmarking process is not complicated. Benchmarking is a structured framework for pursuing worthwhile goals in an organized way.