A Unique Approach to Business Analytics : The Scottsdale Institute Health IT Benchmarking Program

A MID RISING COST pressures and the move towards greater “accountability” for reducing cost and improving patient outcomes in healthcare, the importance of effective business analytics – including IT benchmarking – is at an alltime high.1,2 With the diminishing financial incentives from meaningful use, the ability for healthcare organizations to compare areas of IT costs and staffing with known healthcare leaders or established best practice standards can allow healthcare organizations to identify significant areas of inefficiency or opportunities for financial improvement.3-6 However, many current IT benchmarking programs and databases rely on industry-wide averages, without consideration of differences in the ways costs are actually calculated from one healthcare organization to another.7-9 Given genuine and very real variations in IT department structure between healthcare organizations, this approach can limit the accuracy – and ultimately the value – of the “benchmark.”10,11 This has pushed many organizations to collaborate in an attempt to more effectively leverage business intelligence and analytics to identify areas for cost reduction in their health IT spending.12,13