Benchmarking
OECI started a benchmark project to offer centres the opportunity to monitor and evaluate the quality of key governance, management, clinical and support functions that influence patient outcomes.
Aim
The aim of the benchmark project is the annual collection of a set of indicators to monitor and evaluate the quality of important governance, management, clinical and supportive functions that influence patient outcomes creates opportunities for (anonymous) benchmarking between cancer centres and countries and supports centres to improve their processes.
Benchmark Pilot
As a first step, the benchmark pilot was introduced to allow centres to compare their centre and results anonymously with other centres in Europe, with the aim of helping cancer centres to improve their processes. For this pilot 18 indicators have been selected.
The intention was to include a total of 10 centres in the benchmark pilot and to invite them to share data and provide feedback on the indicators and data collection for future lessons. Data is collected via a link to a questionnaire, available in the OECI e-tool.
This link was sent to the contact person of each participating centre. Many of the benchmark items correspond to the information requested in the quantitative questionnaire in the e-tool used for the OECI Accreditation & Designation Programme.
Participants
An invitation to participate in the OECI benchmark pilot was sent to 13 cancer centres. Of these, six centres responded positively. In addition, following the OECI newsletter, two centres spontaneously indicated their intention to participate in the benchmark pilot.
In total five OECI Comprehensive Cancer Centres and three OECI Cancer Centres participated in the benchmark pilot.
Future Steps
The OECI Accreditation and Designation Board discussed the results of the benchmarking pilot and decided in the future, data collection and use of data, for example for benchmarking purposes, will be integrated into the Accreditation and Designation Programme. Future benchmarking activities will require further refinement of the most relevant indicators to develop a shortlist of indicators with the right balance between the effort to collect data and the benefits of sharing the results with cancer centres to learn and compare results.
The OECI website will be used to communicate the benchmarking results. Cancer centres will receive a summary of their own results to use for improvement of cancer care and research.