Benchmarking has become an essential tool for managing service delivery.
The National Pathology Benchmarking Service at Keele University, established in 1994, has been developed in consultation with clinicians in each pathology discipline and built around feedback from participants. It is a non-competitive programme which promotes the sharing of best practice information, designed so that laboratories can identify their strengths and weaknesses, and use the data to help improve their service delivery.
The Scottish Government HDL_2006_12 included as a local level action that ‘All laboratory departments should participate in the UK National Benchmarking Scheme organised by the University of Keele.’
Further to this, John Burns (Chair of the Diagnostics Steering Group) sent a letter (CEL_DSG_Jan_2012) to all Chief Executives in January 2012 following a review of Keele Benchmarking. The review concluded that NHS Scotland would benefit from continued participation in the Keele Benchmarking service, provided that the service reflects the Scottish context and that the results are used effectively within NHS Scotland. The letter urged continued participation with support from the Managed Diagnostic Networks, including the SMVN. The SMVN will work to ensure the service reflects the Scottish context, encourage engagement at lab level, facilitate peer review of the data, and interpret and present the data to senior management to enable constructive challenge of service delivery.