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Now that we’ve discussed the why’s and how’s, it’s time to determine the what. What are you going to benchmark? Here you need to ask yourself, what are you prepared to change? There are two saying in benchmarking to keep in mind

  1. If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it
  2. If you don’t value it, you won’t change it

These are both in the negative, so let’s change it around – To manage a process, product, or person, you need to measure it/them. To assure that you keep pushing processes, products, and people to the highest potential they have to continually be challenged and usually, this means change. If you don’t intend to manage it or change it – don’t benchmark it! Just like you only write policies you intend on following, only benchmark things you intend on doing something about when you get to the end result.

Most businesses benchmark in these main areas:

  • Operations – Product, Marketing, Services, etc.
  • Finance – Income, A/R, A/P, Revenue, etc.
  • Human Resources – Staffing, Turnover, Wages/Benefits, etc.

There are many more. Whatever you decide, remember these rules: Keep It Simple Stupid and 80/20 – 20% of your metrics affect 80% of your business. Find the main areas of focus that have the most impact on your business and benchmark those. Watch out for Data Analysis Paralysis. This is where you find so many data points to analyze that you lose focus on what’s most important – your business, your employees, and your customers!

Check with your industry associations for specific areas of suggested benchmarking. Most collect data for industry comparisons that you can purchase and use. Be aware of all of your available resources. Reach out to others in your industry and see what they benchmark and what sources they use.

Here are some examples of benchmarking areas for the healthcare industry:

Operations
Wait-time
No Shows (%)
Patients Seen, Appointment types
RVUs, Production
# of Patients, # New, # Procedures
Visits/day, Visits/provider
Admissions, Readmission rate
Occupancy Rate
OR turnaround
Missed charges
Days worked per provider
Utilization of schedule

Finance
Expenses
Operational
Indirect
Gross Collections
Net Collections
Collections per provider
Budgets
Cost per visit/procedure
Denial Rate
Payer Mix (break it down)
Days in AR (break it down)
Total AR (break it down)
Charitable Donations
Fundraising Expenses vs Funds Raised
Referrals
Fee Schedule (contracts)

Human Resources
Wages/Benefits
Employee Satisfaction
Turnover Rate
Support staff/physician FTE

Clinical Quality Measures
Immunizations
Cancer Screenings
Tobacco Usage
Meaningful Use Measures – PQRS – MIPS/MACRA

Patient Care
Wait time
Arrival to – Bed, Nurse, Physician, Discharge
Code Response Time
Patient Care Hours
Incidents
Patient Follow Up
CPT Utilization – E&M, Procedures, Surgeries
ICD10 Utilization
Hospital Acquired Conditions

Marketing
Activities performed vs New patients gained
Referral management
Patient Satisfaction
Social Media presence
Patient demographics

Remember, you don’t have to benchmark the same thing month after month or year after year. Only measure those things that are important to you now. Strategically, what are your business goals for the year? It might change next year, or be different from last year, so don’t continue to benchmark unless the goals need that information to determine if you’ve reached them. You might also benchmark something in the very short term – say 1 month – just to prove or disprove a theory. An example might be that So-and-So ALWAYS schedules things wrong. All you need to do to determine if this is true and if So-and-So is doing it the same or different than others in that position, is a 1 week review. After 1 week you should be able to internally benchmark everyone’s scheduling practices and see if ALWAYS is accurate.