One of the key findings is that while many hospitals are dealing with the same types of problems, they are at different levels of maturity and complexity. There is no typical hospital, and hospitals vary widely in everything from bed utilization to operating room utilization and even staff turnover.
Additionally, healthcare businesses take time to mature. Few facilities are operationally, financially, and quality-of-care stable for the first five years. This is an important consideration in your business planning, especially when evaluating investment opportunities.
There were some surprising results. Healthcare companies in emerging markets show similar operating margins to large private and public healthcare companies in developed markets. However, this does not mean that they do not experience financial difficulties. For example, providers involved in social health insurance often face cash flow problems due to long claims processing times, which require careful management.
One not-so-good surprise was the limited reporting of quality indicators, including incidents. This portion of the dataset was lacking in reported events, likely due to facilities’ limited capacity to collect, analyze, and report quality data. The team behind the program hopes to work with facilities to improve how they measure quality and produce an even better dataset in 2025.
Benchmarking provides the tools needed to honestly reflect and compare performance against peers. It also empowers healthcare organizations to continually improve their performance. Join the benchmarking club next year!
This blog post is part of a series on healthcare benchmarking that will be published over the coming months, so stay tuned for more updates.
More information: Watch the following video about the pilot program and two videos about the benchmarking program in 2023. Videos 1 and 2 both explain how benchmarking can be used to improve performance.
The Healthcare Benchmarking Program is implemented by IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, in partnership with the Government of Japan.
