Benchmarking is a key practice for ASCs to determine how they compare to market competitors and similar facilities. But according to David Kelly, administrator of Samaritan North Surgery Center in Dayton, Ohio, many ASCs make the mistake of concentrating on external benchmarking and forgetting to look at internal progress.
External benchmarking, or comparing data for your surgery center to other facilities, can give your leadership team a good idea of how you stack up compared to others. For example, you may not know your days in A/R, transfer rates or supply costs are particularly high unless you look at data from other surgery centers. But if your surgery center compares favorably to other facilities, Mr. Kelly says it can be easy to rest on your laurels and decide that processes are as good as they need to be.
"You may be doing really well compared to everybody else, but let's say they're all doing terribly," he says. "There could still be an opportunity to improve."
He says internal benchmarking can also be useful for data that may not be available for other surgery centers. For example, North Samaritan Surgery Center keeps some patients overnight, a practice for which data is not readily available, Mr. Kelly says. "Month to month, we look at the number of patients we have, at the type of patients that are staying and at the staffing that goes with it," he says. "If I have two nurses here for 12 hours each overnight, we have to work to stay as productive as possible. In that example, there's not a lot of external data, but looking at it from month to month is important to determine whether overnight cases are still profitable."
He says the center also benchmarks internally on the number of continuous quality improvement studies performed each month. "That keeps us focused on continually doing quality improvement," he says. "Last month we didn't have any, and that should be something we're doing each month."
Learn more about Samaritan North Surgery Center.
External benchmarking, or comparing data for your surgery center to other facilities, can give your leadership team a good idea of how you stack up compared to others. For example, you may not know your days in A/R, transfer rates or supply costs are particularly high unless you look at data from other surgery centers. But if your surgery center compares favorably to other facilities, Mr. Kelly says it can be easy to rest on your laurels and decide that processes are as good as they need to be.
"You may be doing really well compared to everybody else, but let's say they're all doing terribly," he says. "There could still be an opportunity to improve."
He says internal benchmarking can also be useful for data that may not be available for other surgery centers. For example, North Samaritan Surgery Center keeps some patients overnight, a practice for which data is not readily available, Mr. Kelly says. "Month to month, we look at the number of patients we have, at the type of patients that are staying and at the staffing that goes with it," he says. "If I have two nurses here for 12 hours each overnight, we have to work to stay as productive as possible. In that example, there's not a lot of external data, but looking at it from month to month is important to determine whether overnight cases are still profitable."
He says the center also benchmarks internally on the number of continuous quality improvement studies performed each month. "That keeps us focused on continually doing quality improvement," he says. "Last month we didn't have any, and that should be something we're doing each month."
Learn more about Samaritan North Surgery Center.