The Audit Commission has developed a powerful online tool called the National Benchmarker which provides direct access to our Payment by Results (PbR) benchmarking. From June 2009 the National Benchmarker contains a brand new set of HRG4 benchmarking to assist trusts and PCTs with the introduction of HRG4. This national analysis is not available anywhere else in the NHS.
Log on to the National Benchmarker now to access our brand new HRG4 benchmarking.
The National Benchmarker covers admitted patient care and outpatient activity at all acute NHS hospital trusts in England and is freely available to the NHS. All you need to gain access is to register online with a NHS email address.
The Audit Commission's 'National Benchmarker' was joint overall winner in the 'Excellence in Healthcare Information Management' at the BT-sponsored 'E-health insider' awards ceremony on 20 October 2009. Read more about the Commission's PbR winner.
About the National Benchmarker
Whether you are in a PCT, trust, hospital department or are an individual clinician, the National Benchmarker compares acute hospital activity data, clinical coding and PbR related data with other organisations to flag up questions for concern, or for discussions about matters such as healthcare management, payments or data collection. Further information is available in our National Benchmarker for the NHS leaflet.
The tool is intuitive and easy to use with technical and non-technical views giving you user-friendly reporting - and the latest data is loaded as soon as it's available giving you the most up to date benchmarking dataset.
To support the launch of our HRG4 benchmarking we have produced a brand new tutorial video and a new version of the user guide to ensure users get the best out of the tool.
Case studies
John Harrison, Plymouth Primary Care Trust says: 'I've got a much fuller, richer picture about what is going on. I'm not aware of anything else that can give such up-to-date analysis and the kind of ratio analysis that the National Benchmarker does.'
Read more from the Plymouth Care Trust - National Benchmarker case study.
Claire Oates, service reporting accountant at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, says: 'It's a huge help both internally, to improve how we are managing activity and information, and externally, to pre-empt and investigate potential questions from commissioners.'
Read more from the Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust - National Benchmarker case study.
Vinidh Paleri, consultant surgeon at Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, says: 'When clinicians take responsibility in the coding process, the outcome and coding accuracy increases. The National Benchmarker is a useful tool for clinicians as well as managers. It is a fantastic resource to log on to and check how your trust or specialty compares with others.'
Read more from the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust - National Benchmarker case study.
Joint working
The Commission is indebted to the ongoing support of the NHS Information Centre for Health and Social Care (external link) who were instrumental in working with us to develop our benchmarking methodology, and who provide ongoing support to what is the first comprehensive programme of national benchmarking using data from the Secondary Uses Service (SUS).