Benchmarking of hospital activity data: an international comparison

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The aim of the study is to examine the feasibility of comparing hospitals internationally and to highlight some of the barriers. Design/methodology/approach -Comparative analysis of anonymised patient-level data from hospitals in New Zealand and the UK. Findings -Comparisons were made of aggregate statistics. For example, it was found that average length of stay and death rates in New Zealand were lower than in the UK, although average severity was higher. Adverse reactions were higher in the New Zealand sample than in that of the UK. Research limitations/implications -There were data limitations associated with different coding conventions in the two countries. There may also be different coding conventions used when classifying data. The research attempted to correct for this, but some may remain. Originality/value -There are few cross-national comparisons of hospital performance. This paper shows that such analysis is possible. It is hoped that further effort can be put into addressing some of the data issues described above to further refine the results.

Hospitals accreditation status in Indonesia: associated with hospital characteristics, market competition intensity, and hospital performance?

“…The government should mainly oversee either the process of quality assurance or the reporting mechanisms for both public and private health care. Hospital benchmarking should be based on standardised performance reports that are linked to a hospital’s credentialing mechanism [59, 60]. Such a system will strengthen the accountability of health care.…”

Benchmarking operating room departments in the Netherlands

“…Although benchmarking was developed for the business industry, it is increasingly being observed in the public sector (Booth et al, 2005;Guven-Uslu, 2005). However, empirical research on the use and function of benchmarking in health organisations is Figure 1.…”

International benchmarking of tertiary trauma centers: productivity and throughput approach

“…Since then, the approach has been used more and more in comparing hospitals [2,4,5] and care processes [6]. In recent studies, international benchmarking has been extended to also cover trauma centers.…”

“…Since tertiary trauma centers are typically responsible for taking care of the most severe injuries in the center's regional catchment area as well as from even longer distances (e.g., surrounding rural areas), finding similar hospitals inside the same region is typically not possible. Therefore, analyzing the performance with benchmarking has to be understood in a wider context, such as comparing trauma centers in metropolitan areas and internationally [ 2 ]. International benchmarking could also reveal bottlenecks in healthcare system-level policies that should be discussed in a wider forum [ 3 ].…”

“…In the area of healthcare, international benchmarking was first applied during the 1980s at the policy and system levels by the OECD and WHO [ 3 ]. Since then, the approach has been used more and more in comparing hospitals [ 2 , 4 , 5 ] and care processes [ 6 ]. In recent studies, international benchmarking has been extended to also cover trauma centers.…”