COVER STORY
SPECIAL FEATURE— CLINICAL EXCELLENCE
Caption to come. Lenia adi as eum explabore, aut. Pari aut quat estectur?
Compare and Improve
Using clinical benchmarking effectively means selecting meaningful benchmarks, making careful comparisons and taking action based on what you learn. BY SANDRA J. JONES, CASC
C
linical benchmarking has become an essential tool for ASCs looking
to improve quality, boost performance and meet the expectations of regulators, payers and patients, but a lot of ASCs are still uncomfortable with it. The
Joint Commission and the
Accreditation Association for Am- bulatory Health Care list failure to benchmark among their top five or six citations of deficiencies, and about half of all ASCs that went through accredi- tation in 2011 still did not benchmark, according to an estimate from ASCA and the Outpatient Ophthalmic Surgery Society (OOSS). In Quality Assurance and Perfor- mance Improvement (QAPI) activities, which are mandated by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), regulations in many states and ASC ac-
Now Online
ASCA’s new fully online clinical bench- marking tool—ASCA Benchmarking— is now available. Find out more and subscribe today
atwww.ascassociation.org/ ASCAbenchmarking.
creditors, benchmarking can help you focus on selecting an area for improve- ment and demonstrate your success.
Starting the Process Benchmarking involves comparing per- formance over time, among specialties or individual physicians, or between your ASC and an external source. It can be month to month, quarter to quarter or year to year trending. To make the most of benchmark- ing in your ASC, review the items that
14 ASC FOCUS NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013
affect the areas of your operations that show the greatest need for change. For example, choose a high-volume or problem-prone item or one asso- ciated with regulatory or standards compliance; or look at measures of operational efficiency such as clinical hours or accounts receivable days. There are many ways to identify an appropriate item to measure. If you are participating in ASCA Benchmarking, review your individual report and iden- tify items where your performance is not as good as others. ASCA introduced a fully Internet-based clinical and op- erational ASC benchmarking tool that offers many user-friendly features this year. The report generated by that tool covers more than 40 key indicators, including clinical outcomes, processes and key operational measures.
Internal and External Benchmarking Internal benchmarking is a good place to start, because it can show variabil- ity in a particular process over time,
The advice and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent official Ambulatory Surgery Center Association policy or opinion.
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