Narrative review of European healthcare benchmarking experiences: shared goals, different focuses and formats (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Benchmarking experiences have been flourishing in Europe during the last years with the idea of improving healthcare quality. OBJECTIVE This paper aims to review the European benchmarking experiences, analysing their main characteristics and highlighting common and differential ones. METHODS The identification of benchmarking experiences was based on the list of European countries for which there exists an electronic “HiT health system review”. Predefined variables were identified, mainly data sources, formats, topics, and target audiences. RESULTS 14 benchmarking experiences were identified. Most of them are governmental. All of them are web-based. The easiness to navigate through the websites and materials and to understand them varies among experiences. Most common data sources are registries. Few experiences include patient experience indicators. None of them explicitly mentions if they use results as the basis to start quality improvement efforts. CONCLUSIONS Benchmarking is essential for transparency and accountability, and to support improvement. To do this effectively it must reconcile important and potentially conflicting goals: meaningful accountability, requiring real consequences from underperformance, and an environment that encourages open and honest reporting. Enhancing reporting websites is needed.