Do you know how you’re doing, compared to others? Do you know where you're doing well, where you're not and why? It's easy to find out and worth doing.
Practices are often not open to comparing information or feel it's not worth doing. It's only usually done with unreliable data, by others for a set purpose. For practices wanting to see where they can focus and improve, benchmarking can be a powerful tool.
Benchmarking against other practices allows you to compare performance and reveals what your own data may not. It shows strengths and weaknesses, where to focus to improve the business and helps in discussions with CQC and patient groups.
To start, find practices willing to benchmark with you; its ideal for a PM group or federation to lead. Agree what would be relevant and of value to benchmark; it might be patients per FTE GP, use of online services, DNA etc. One benchmarking group I helped used 9 areas to gain a broad view.
Share the results monthly, ideally with a consolidated report and use this to discuss, challenge and share ideas. It can highlight best practice and is a great platform to share, support and educate to build stronger practices.
Get in touch if you want to use benchmarking to improve your practices.
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