Why benchmarking your care organisation is key to continued improvement

Using certain metrics to benchmark your care organisation is a method of analysis that over the last few years has been growing both in its utilisation and impact.  

Care Sector Benchmarking can be a powerful means of exploring industry standards outside of your own setting, giving you unbiased, data-driven insights into how your service is performing when compared to generalised, sector-wide data. 

What is benchmarking in the care sector? 

Benchmarking your care outcomes means using your internal insights into various metrics, such as the number of falls or the time of day they occur in, or perhaps data on medication errors or weight loss analysis or hydration levels, or it could be safety protocols or staff training, and analysing them in comparison with similar metrics across a larger range of other external organisations that have been tallied together to present indicators for best practice. 

When comparing your data against these trends, you will be able to analyse your outcomes in a wider industry context.  

Click here to read more about care sector benchmarking 

What about data privacy? 

If you are a care home manager and you are thinking about utilising Care Sector Benchmarking, you might be concerned about how your data is being used. But with a care benchmarking tool, like the one offered by Person Centred Software, your data, as well as the data of other care organisations, will be anonymised.  

The actual performance indicators themselves will only appear as trends. Therefore, you don’t have to worry about feeling like your home is being compared to others – instead the data will only serve as a means through which you can understand your own performance and identify areas of improvement. 

Continued improvement by benchmarking care outcomes 

Benchmarking the performance of your care service can be a crucial set in improving the way in which you identify areas for improvement, reducing the risk of errors in strategic decision-making and justifying actions through data. Because of this, it can facilitate growth and improvement in various areas of care, which in turn enhance the quality of life of residents and the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the care service. 

By benchmarking your care service, you can identify gaps in performance by comparing your data to industry standards and get a truer sense of where your care home sits in terms of achieving the best outcomes possible.  

Benchmarking care should not be a one-time activity; it should be an ongoing process that encourages engagement with the latest insights and standards of best practice and care outcomes. It will encourage a culture of continuous improvement within the care setting because the latest standards expected to be met can be monitored far more closely and effectively. The decisions you make today will have a positive impact on your care provision going forward.  

Investing in benchmarking for your care home can be a driving force of sustainable improvement and development. To find out more, just click here.