To Prepare
•    Search reliable resources from data bases or on the Internet and locate a journal article discussing how a health care organization has used the principle of benchmarking.
•    How could the concept of benchmarking be used in your own organization (or one with which you are familiar), regardless of size?
•    Consider how benchmarking could be useful to you in decision making.
•    Analyze the potential risks of making a faulty comparison.
Assignment
Write a summary of the article you found (including the APA reference) and explain how it informed your understanding of benchmarking. Discuss how benchmarking could be used for financial

decision making in your own healthcare organization (or one with which you are familiar). Also analyze the potential risks of making comparisons with an organization that is not a credible

match with your own. Use other scholarly article to support your statements

In order to improve processes quality, management keeps records and evaluates processes based on these records. This type of recordkeeping is considered benchmarking. Benchmarking allows an organization to analyze variances for different types of processes. Benchmarking can also be used to improve in a continual improvement process. In this discussion, you will explore how benchmarking can be used for strategic planning.

Respond to the following:

• How can benchmarking be used as part of a process improvement procedure in strategic planning?
• What are the disadvantages of benchmarking?
• Would benchmarking work in all types of organizations? Why or why not?
• How would you explain to workers who were resistant to engaging in benchmarking that their assistance and inputs are needed for the benchmarking effort to be successful?
• Do you believe that benchmarking can lead to a competitive advantage for the organization, or does benchmarking simply allow an organization to “catch up” to the organization’s competition?
• Select an organization with which everyone  would be familiar. Select a process in which your selected organization engages on a regular basis. Describe a company that would be considered a “leader” in the business process that you have selected. How can your chosen organization learn from the leader in this business process and improve its own performance on the process that you selected?