Clinical lab benchmarking is the process whereby independent or hospital laboratories measure their performance and financial metrics against similar laboratories. The goal of benchmarking is to identify areas where opportunities for improvement exist as compared to other similar facilities to drive change. Benchmarks can be calculated at the overall facility level or by department/section.
A critical aspect of benchmarking is the selection of appropriate peers. The peers selected must contain laboratories with similar volume, complexity of testing, level of automation, and other unique characteristics that can be critical to ensuring an apples to apples comparison.
Below are some aspects of Hospital Lab Benchmarking worth consideration:
Every individual needs someone from the outside (preferably someone who has been in their position before) to evaluate their performance to enable them to make wise decisions. Laboratories are no different. As labs grow and expand, it’s crucial that they pursue more efficient and effective practices to provide better patient care at lower costs. Benchmarking provides laboratories the opportunity to evaluate how it is performing on key indicators and to improve any processes that are negatively affecting performance.
Accumen focuses on being “all things lab” and has subject matter experts that understand the nuances and complexity of laboratory that are not necessarily associated with all clinical areas of the hospital. In order to have a high degree of confidence in benchmarking results, Accumen provides highly advanced filtering for the peer selection process to ensure that your laboratory is matched with peers with similar attributes and receiving a truly fair and accurate comparison.
Lab benchmarking is the process whereby laboratories compare their performance to similar peer laboratories around the nation. Labs use benchmarking to determine how they compare with other labs that are performing similar work, in terms of volumes, complexity, and other critical factors. They can determine whether changes are needed in order to meet best practices. Benchmarking can provide guidance to determine opportunity areas to focus on.
The costs for lab benchmarking vary considerably across companies. Each lab has unique departments, processes, test volumes, and test complexity that may affect how much it will have to pay for appropriate benchmarking against other laboratories at its peer level.
To benchmark a lab, you must find another lab with parallel services, departments, automation, test volumes, and test complexity. Then, you must compare your overall performance in areas such as productivity and financial performance to that of the peer laboratories.
Accumen provides highly advanced filtering for the peer selection process to ensure your laboratory is matched with peers with similar attributes and receives a truly fair and accurate comparison.
If you find that your lab has such a high degree of unique attributes that make peer selection impractical, Accumen provides clear standards so that you can effectively benchmark against yourself, whether that means as a whole facility or on a department by department basis.
There are multiple companies that specialize in laboratory benchmarking. Accumen is one of the most well-known laboratory benchmarking solutions available. Our highly-specialized benchmarking provides laboratories with relevant information to determine the best labs to benchmark against.
