Perfusion services national process improvement benchmarking.

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations recommends national and regional benchmarking in the quality improvement process. Benchmarking is comparing your organization's patient care process outcomes to the best. This communication describes a national benchmarking process for peer comparison of indicators in perfusion patient services process improvement. A databasing communication aplet was designed to facilitate national benchmarking as part of a larger perfusion service management software application. When patient information is entered in the patient database post precedure, patient-specific numeric data and 'yes'/'no' queries are entered at the clinical site. At any time, the local perfusionist system manager may transmit their own data and receive national database group results by modem and a 1-800 phone number. Local indicator outcomes are compared to national results. Strategies are employed to assure that institution and patient name remain anonymous and institution specific data are stored at the clinical site. Participating institutions employ an e-mail aplet to discuss and decide which indicators to employ as a group. Nine institutions have contributed outcome data for more than 6,425 cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) procedures to a national database for ten months. National and institutional means for six discrete CPB outcome parameters are compared. The percent 'yes' responses to four procedure-related questions are compared. Joint Commission recommended benchmarking is accomplished while patient care is improved by comparing outcomes.