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Ascension Health Information Services IT Benchmarking Process Overview. History.
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Ascension Health Information ServicesIT BenchmarkingProcess Overview
History • In FY08, Ascension Health’s internal process improvement function, Operations Resource Group performed benchmarking activities across the System on all costs, including IT costs. As a result of this work, AHIS Leadership noted the need for improved IT benchmarking that would do the following: • Allow for comparability to other healthcare organizations • Provide year-to-year trending comparisons • Provide comparability among our Health Ministries • During this timeframe, Scottsdale Institute (SI) requested that Ascension Health participate in an industry benchmarking survey
History • This led to Ascension Health’s participation in the SI survey and the beginning of an evolving internal benchmarking process designed to: • Standardize the reporting process and information requirements • Normalization of data to allow for stratification across Health Ministries • Provide comparable information by Health Ministry • This stratified information allows comparison of costs based on value provided by AHIS. Examples of differences in value provided include penetration of wireless infrastructure, extent of EHR functionality and levels of smart pump deployment
Benefits to Ascension Health – Internal Benchmarking • Allows System and AHIS Leadership opportunities to compare efficiency by Health Ministry • Allows for year-to-year trending analysis • Timing of process gives AHIS Finance Leadership information to drive budget reviews and identify inefficiencies and/or best practice opportunities • Gives Health Ministry IT leaders ability to engage in discussion with IT leaders at similar Health Ministries to proactively identify areas for improvement
Benefits to Ascension Health – Internal Benchmarking • Provides for a collective or individual Health Ministry comparison to external benchmarks (Gartner, Most Wired, Catholic Healthcare Association, EMRAM) • Provides organization with multiple stratified views: • Per staffed bed • Per FTE • % of operating expense • By EHR platform • Per equivalent discharges • Per device
Benefits to Ascension Health – SI Benchmarking • Scottsdale Institute normalization allows for easier identification of true peers (size, volume, market, EHR functionality, infrastructure) • Allows Ascension Health local IT leaders ability to identify peer organizations to discuss approaches to foster collaboration and innovation with external thought leaders • Allows System Leadership opportunities to compare efficiency versus peers and/or competitors • Gives System Finance Leadership information to investigate best of class organizations to drive budgetary goals and identify best practices
Specific Outcomes • Has informed organizational knowledge on drivers of cost structure allowing for operational decisions to be made to increase efficiency • Raised Finance understanding of organization cost structure resulting in better dialogue on budget submissions and ultimately on budget control—the CFOs have access to all of the benchmarking results • Highlighted outliers/anomalies to allow CIOs to investigate potential issues/inefficiencies that previously had not been known to the organization
Future Plans • Develop cost per unit service metric(s) to provide a clear indicator of value and efficiency of IT services across Ascension Health • Plans to better align benchmarking process timeline with budget/capital process to allow benchmarking information and analysis to be fully integrated into process