Discus the importance of using benchmarking tools and how they promote a culture of safety in healthcare organizations. Examine the importance of effective teams and how they contribute to high-quality care and culture safety in the organization.

When responding to your peers, compare and contrast their answers to your own.

To complete this assignment, review the Discussion Rubric document.

peer 1.

Hello Everyone

According to the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE, 2016), benchmarking is defined as the process of continuously comparing and measuring an organization with the business leaders anywhere in the world to gain information which will help the organization take action to improve its performance. It allows businesses to gain a better understanding of how they measure up against others in the same industry. Benchmarking promotes a culture of safety in health care organizations by allowing a dependable basis for comparative analysis, and while facilitating strategic decision making.

If organizations are aware of how they compare to other like businesses, then businesses are most likely to engage in the highest performance, for best customer value. Weaknesses and issues can be identified early, in hopes that corrective actions will alleviate the problems. The importance of effective teams contributes to high-quality care & culture safety in organizations by improving patient outcomes, preventing medical errors, while improving efficiency to maximize patient satisfaction (Bhatt & Swick, 2017).

References

American Society of Association Executives (Apr 2016). The Benefits of Benchmarking. Retrieved from https://www.asaecenter.org/resources/articles/an_plus/2016/april/the-benefits-of-benchmarking

Bhatt, Jay, & Swick, Maureen (Mar 2017). Focusing on Teamwork and Communication to Improve Patient Safety. Retrieved from https://www.aha.org/news/blog/2017-03-15-focusing-teamwork-and-communication-improve-patient-safety#:~:text=Patient%20safety%20experts%20agree%20that,efficiency%20and%20increase%20patient%20satisfaction

peer 2.

The healthcare system is greatly regulated and with more federal oversight than ever before, organizations must strive to deliver care that is both cost-effective and high in quality. Organizations and physicians alike are being held to higher standards and even the smallest of discrepancies is public knowledge today. One way to ensure a culture of safety within the organization is through the implementation of benchmarking. This tool provides evaluative measures on both the internal and external levels. For example, through internal benchmarking, an organization could identify outcomes that show a strong variance from historical data. This data could then be used to identify where the interruption in operations stemmed. External benchmarking can be used to identify whether an organization is meeting the industry standard. This level of scrutiny allows a healthcare organization to examine how they compare to nationally recognized standards of operation. Ettorchi-Tardy et al. (2012) explain that “Benchmarking is usually considered to be a process of seeking out and implementing best practices at the best cost. This pursuit of performance is based on collaboration among several organizations. The basic principle of benchmarking consists of identifying a point of comparison called the benchmark, against which everything else can be compared” (para. 4). Having an effective team is by far one of the most important tools needed for the development of safe practices and other areas of important organizational growth. An effective team is one that is able to communicate effectively, observe a discrepancy, collect pertinent data, interpret that data, and then use the results to implement programs and policies that promote a culture of safety. It is the unified efforts of a team that brings about success and facilitates real change.

Ettorchi-Tardy, A., Levif, M., & Michel, P. (2012). Benchmarking: A method for continuous quality improvement in health. Healthcare Policy, 7(4), e101–e119. Article: Benchmarking: A Method for Continuous Quality Improvement in Health

This article goes over the importance of benchmarking and is an important resource for this module’s discussion assignment.

Article: As Benchmarking in Healthcare Becomes More Common, Artificial Intelligence is Poised to Facilitate It