rs handle issues, using practice and environmental factors to eliminate potential benchmarking partners reduces the value and learning opportunities for the organizations doing the benchmarking.

Does a Twin Exist?

It is virtually impossible for a hospital to find an identical apple. There are approximately 5,800 hospitals in the United States. Focusing on, for example, only 500-bed, non-profits, can narrow this even further. Simply by adding a few more criteria … academic

Top executives and managers in other industries know it is not only acceptable, but necessary to benchmark with other industries to obtain process improvements. For example, a major hotel chain desires to improve guest services. This chain not only has other hotel chains to examine for comparisons, but also can and should look at theme parks or retail corporations. Instead of comparing hotels to hotels, the hotel’s guest service policies are compared with the guest service policies of theme parks, restaurants, and others. Valuable lessons are gleaned from this benchmarking process. While the industries may function very differently, their fundamental guest service processes are common and provide learning opportunities for all parties. Similarly, retailers have made major improvements in inventory acquisition, warehousing, distribution and tracking. Hospitals haven’t typically studied these processes, citing the “uniqueness” of the healthcare and hospital operations as the reason. As a result, many hospitals continue to practice outdated and non-integrated supply transactions, as opposed to making supply management a priority. Many,processes are similar enough across industries for healthcare managers to learn and adapt process improvements from others.

Even though healthcare downplays cross-industry benchmarking because of the uniqueness of healthcare, they also believe that healthcare-to-healthcare benchmarks are valid only with those organizations exactly alike in structure, size, scope, culture, affiliations, physical layout, etc., etc. For example, an outpatient clinic wants to improve its cardiac rehabilitation services but only wants to be benchmarked against clinics offering cardiac rehabilitation services that use Saturdays to deal with overflow, as they do. Healthcare systems also want to benchmark with other systems as opposed to stand-alone facilities. While it is important to determine the way others handle issues, using practice and environmental factors to eliminate potential benchmarking partners reduces the value and learning opportunities for the organizations doing the benchmarking.

Does a Twin Exist?

It is virtually impossible for a hospital to find an identical apple. There are approximately 5,800 hospitals in the United States. Focusing on, for example, only 500-bed, non-profits, can narrow this even further. Simply by adding a few more criteria … academic t

theme parks, restaurants, and others. Valuable lessons are gleaned from this benchmarking process. While the industries may function very differently, their fundamental guest service processes are common and provide learning opportunities for all parties. Similarly, retailers have made major improvements in inventory acquisition, warehousing, distribution and tracking. Hospitals haven’t typically studied these processes, citing the “uniqueness” of the healthcare and hospital operations as the reason. As a result, many hospitals continue to practice outdated and non-integrated supply transactions, as opposed to making supply management a priority. Many,processes are similar enough across industries for healthcare managers to learn and adapt process improvements from others.

Even though healthcare downplays cross-industry benchmarking because of the uniqueness of healthcare, they also believe that healthcare-to-healthcare benchmarks are valid only with those organizations exactly alike in structure, size, scope, culture, affiliations, physical layout, etc., etc. For example, an outpatient clinic wants to improve its cardiac rehabilitation services but only wants to be benchmarked against clinics offering cardiac rehabilitation services that use Saturdays to deal with overflow, as they do. Healthcare systems also want to benchmark with other systems as opposed to stand-alone facilities. While it is important to determine the way others handle issues, using practice and environmental factors to eliminate potential benchmarking partners reduces the value and learning opportunities for the organizations doing the benchmarking.

Does a Twin Exist?

It is virtually impossible for a hospital to find an identical apple. There are approximately 5,800 hospitals in the United States. Focusing on, for example, only 500-bed, non-profits, can narrow this even further. Simply by adding a few more criteria … academic

ions as the reason. As a result, many hospitals continue to practice outdated and non-integrated supply transactions, as opposed to making supply management a priority. Many,processes are similar enough across industries for healthcare managers to learn and adapt process improvements from others.

Even though healthcare downplays cross-industry benchmarking because of the uniqueness of healthcare, they also believe that healthcare-to-healthcare benchmarks are valid only with those organizations exactly alike in structure, size, scope, culture, affiliations, physical layout, etc., etc. For example, an outpatient clinic wants to improve its cardiac rehabilitation services but only wants to be benchmarked against clinics offering cardiac rehabilitation services that use Saturdays to deal with overflow, as they do. Healthcare systems also want to benchmark with other systems as opposed to stand-alone facilities. While it is important to determine the way others handle issues, using practice and environmental factors to eliminate potential benchmarking partners reduces the value and learning opportunities for the organizations doing the benchmarking.

Does a Twin Exist?

It is virtually impossible for a hospital to find an identical apple. There are approximately 5,800 hospitals in the United States. Focusing on, for example, only 500-bed, non-profits, can narrow this even further. Simply by adding a few more criteria … academic

ose organizations exactly alike in structure, size, scope, culture, affiliations, physical layout, etc., etc. For example, an outpatient clinic wants to improve its cardiac rehabilitation services but only wants to be benchmarked against clinics offering cardiac rehabilitation services that use Saturdays to deal with overflow, as they do. Healthcare systems also want to benchmark with other systems as opposed to stand-alone facilities. While it is important to determine the way others handle issues, using practice and environmental factors to eliminate potential benchmarking partners reduces the value and learning opportunities for the organizations doing the benchmarking.

Does a Twin Exist?

It is virtually impossible for a hospital to find an identical apple. There are approximately 5,800 hospitals in the United States. Focusing on, for example, only 500-bed, non-profits, can narrow this even further. Simply by adding a few more criteria … academic

rs handle issues, using practice and environmental factors to eliminate potential benchmarking partners reduces the value and learning opportunities for the organizations doing the benchmarking.

Does a Twin Exist?

It is virtually impossible for a hospital to find an identical apple. There are approximately 5,800 hospitals in the United States. Focusing on, for example, only 500-bed, non-profits, can narrow this even further. Simply by adding a few more criteria … academic teaching hospital vs. not; location; managed care penetration; number of buildings; outpatient volumes; etc., simple mathematics shows that a hospital can eliminate all potential hospitals as benchmarking partners.

Requiring multiple and non-relevant criteria narrows the list of acceptable benchmarking partners. Hospitals are complex operations. There are an infinite number of differences among hospitals, and there isn’t one exactly like another. Eric Franz, Manager of Financial Services at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, Illinois, agrees. “There is no twin hospital out there,” says Franz. “It just doesn’t exist. We are unique and we want to be unique.” It makes no sense, then, for hospitals to proclaim their uniqueness while at the same time developing lists of criteria “acceptable” benchmarking partners must meet. For hospitals to use benchmarking effectively, they must accept the fact that their twin doesn’t exist. Then, they can use their resources to learn instead of wasting resources benchmarking their level of uniqueness. Apples-to-Apples

Misconstrued – The Benchmarking Poison

Consider this example of how the value of a benchmark decreases as the hospital attempts to narrowly define acceptable benchmarking partners: Apples-to-Apples: Benchmark the cost of medical transcription functions at hospitals. McIntoshes-to-McIntoshes: Benchmark the cost of medical transcription functions at hospitals with a centralized transcription department that out sources at least 60 percent of their transcriptions.

New England McIntoshes-to-New England McIntoshes: Benchmark the cost of medical transcription functions at a system-wide set of hospitals with a centralized transcription department that out sources at least 60 percent of their transcription, writing at least 40 different types of reports and an average TAT for History & Physicals of 24 hours. There should be at least three but no more