These steps can make benchmarking work well
The DOE makes these suggestions
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in Washington, DC, offers these suggestions for how best to implement and use a benchmarking process. While the DOE has developed these guidelines specifically for the DOE and government contractors, the process described also may be applicable to the health care industry, including HIM departments.
The DOE’s suggestions are summarized below:
Benchmarking Initiative Process Suggestions
Here are suggested improvements to the benchmarking initiative methodology that should be applied to future benchmarking efforts, as well as aspects of the initiative that were valuable and worth repeating. The individual suggestions are grouped under broad initiative process categories.
1. Overall project.
• Allow more time in each phase of the initiative. The logistics involved in planning for and executing such a wide-ranging initiative are enormously complex. More time should be allotted for consulting with interested parties, identifying partners, conducting the site visits, and performing the analysis. If additional time is unavailable, the objectives of each element of the initiative should be carefully matched to the initiative schedule. This would improve the degree to which the overall project objectives are targeted and would permit more time for data analysis.
• Conduct the elements in sequence, not in parallel. Conducting the elements of such an initiative in sequential phases would allow for a more targeted approach to identifying potential areas for cost improvements and provide factual support for ideas about what drives costs in those areas. For example, a mail survey could provide a high-level indication of the areas about which people are most concerned. A paired cost comparison could then follow, comparing projects in order to provide detailed cost information about those areas. Finally, a component benchmarking exercise could focus on management practices, policies, or procedures that contribute to cost increases.
• Develop highly specific project selection criteria. Due to schedule constraints, it was necessary to provide general project selection criteria in order to allow participating organizations to gather the most easily accessible data that would meet the selection requirements. However, the generic selection criteria yielded a choice of projects that were only partially comparable. The benchmarking project team selected the best available projects, but could only compare portions thereof. For future studies, it would be beneficial to develop a more detailed set of project specifications. This would provide a better initial project selection pool and allow more complete project comparisons.
2. Involving interested parties.
• Foster awareness of DOE’s relationship to tribal governments. All organizations working on DOE initiatives must be made aware of DOE’s government-to-government relationship with tribal governments. The organizations and the project overall should interact with tribes as sovereign governments which have unique interests and concerns, and not as members of the public or citizen interest groups. In particular, they must be aware of the need for full tribal participation in the federal decision-making process, in accordance with the federal trust responsibility and consistent with the DOE American Indian Policy.
• Streamline the delegation and performance of tasks to involve interested parties early. Streamline the delegation and performance of tasks, such as approving invitation lists and making initial phone calls to interested parties. This would permit more advance notice about meeting dates and might allow the representatives of some groups that would otherwise be under-represented to adjust their plans in order to participate or to suggest substitutes.
• Interested party input into the benchmarking process contributes materially to its success. Interested parties at the kickoff meeting strongly expressed their views that the original scope of work for the paired cost comparison could not be achieved within the schedule. Working with interested parties, the benchmarking project team was able to develop an achievable scope of work that still met the overall intent of the benchmarking initiative, as well as the expectations of interested parties.
3. Visiting sites.
For component benchmarking, use a structured methodology supported by appropriate management tools, including checklists and survey.
• Provide as much information as possible prior to the visit. This practice assures that appropriate facilities and people are being contacted and informs partners about the kind of data required.
• Prepare an overview briefing. Assume that partners know nothing about the initiative and (depending on the audience) prepare a short, informal discussion, or a more formal presentation.
• Conduct site visits with the people most knowledgeable about the project. This practice is necessary to gain a clear understanding of the project and all contributing costs. Face-to-face interviewing and data-gathering techniques can be used to obtain real-time information about costs.
• Develop performance indicators to help explain reasons for cost differences. For example, DOE pays for state health and safety inspectors to reside at some DOE facilities. Thus inspections are more frequent and more costly than those in private industry. Developing performance indicators for these types of activities would help DOE explain the reasons for cost differences and to ask for comments and suggestions.
4. Gathering data.
• The cost of operations data is often considered sensitive. Industry and DOE contractors are concerned about contract competition so sources and data must be protected. A greater number of participants would help in this area. The objectives and likely benefits of the initiative must be stated clearly to provide comparisons only with comparable data.
• Required information may be nested within sensitive documents. Companies may be reluctant to release entire documents so the project team must be specific about actual data needed.
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