Healthcare can be a losing game.
Take the US health economy, which is a “negative sum game”. It spends more on healthcare as its share of the economy and nearly twice as much as the average OECD country. While policymakers tend to view healthcare systems as a local country-specific agenda, international comparison can inspire and encourage healthy competition. This is why we looked at how to benchmark health companies against market peers.
Trilliant Health – a healthcare analytics company – has launched an application that layers machine learning over massive data sources to help health systems benchmark against market peers. They developed a similarity modelling called “SimilarityIndex” that enables healthcare organisations to benchmark accurately by identifying the most similar markets, facilities, providers and patient populations.
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To optimise decision-making, healthcare systems that operate in various markets must look beyond national benchmarks and incorporate an evidence-based strategy built on accurate benchmarks.
Understanding the health economy gives healthcare managers a helicopter view. Eventually, it will enable them to make more informed decisions in fragmented markets.
The benefits of the three types of healthcare benchmarking methods:
1.) Internal Benchmarking
Internal benchmarking is the process of comparing metrics between departments and divisions within the same healthcare organisation. The aim is to help specific branches and offices improve their operations or practices.
2.) Competitive Benchmarking
Closely monitoring and reviewing direct competitors’ performance is a common practice in any competitive market. Traditionally, this comparison has been made between businesses in the same geographic area. However, looking at clinics and hospitals in a different location gives the management a broader market perspective and opportunity for further improving their processes.
3.) Functional Benchmarking
This benchmarking compares the healthcare organisation to those in a different industry with a similar metric or process. Functional comparisons are great for looking at operational data, such as average data collection time, system availability and IT systems.
The next step? To create an effective healthcare data strategy, follow these five steps.
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