Benchmarking In Health (part I)

The papers in this special issue cover a range of topics and issues on benchmarking in health. The papers cover a wide range of perspectives, from practitioners and academics, covering theoretical and practical aspects of benchmarking. Benchmarking has become an increasingly widespread practice in managing health care provision. The label of benchmarking covers a diverse range of practices. The diversity of practices is explored in this special issue. The papers in this special issue emphasise the growing application and significance of benchmarking and examine the possibility of its use to better understand and improve health service performance. Internationally, many schemes have been devised to assist health care practitioners and managers to improve services and cost efficiency. Governments have introduced
new cost and information systems and managerial practices, including benchmarking, in seeking to control the fiscal burden of health care provision. Benchmarking has been employed in various guises from external cost comparisons through to improvement of healthcare procedures. This special issue draws together evidence of various attempts to better understand best practice(s).