The Community Heath Center Benchmarking and Knowledge Management Initiative

The Community Heath Center Benchmarking and Knowledge Management Initiative is a campaign initiated by Strategic Resource Network, Inc. (SRN) to accomplish three objectives: To make peer group performance benchmarking data routinely accessible, useful and practical to produce for every health center in the country. To provide the means for health centers that participate in health center controlled networks to accurately interpret benchmark results and to identify and share best practices among members. To guide health centers in restructuring system parameters, procedures or both to support the implementation of best practices and to support effective knowledge management within and between health centers. SRN is a provider of healthcare (business) intelligence software and web-based knowledge management resources including peer group benchmarking. Our software (Planning and Performance Manager) incorporates a set of “Uniform Health Center Parameters” that normalizes data and generates monthly files for upload to SRN’s Benchmark Center. Our heath centers then define statistics they are interested in, select peer groups based upon location, size, services offered and affiliation and generate benchmark reports. All health centers need access to this kind of intelligence whether or not they’ve already implemented a healthcare (business) intelligence program. So, SRN is introducing a new program called Vital Signs Web Resources (VSWR) that any health center can access through their participating primary care association (PCA) and/or health center controlled network (HCCN). Each participating PCA or HCCN must first set up a master account with SRN. Once the account is active, any interested health center can sign up for a six-month minimum VSWR subscription. SRN will provide (via download) the Uniform Health Center Parameter (UHCP) documentation, a listing and description of the Vital Signs Web Statistics available, and a spreadsheet template into which the health centers will enter their data following UHCP guidelines. On whatever frequency the health center desires, they can login to the Benchmark Center and upload their data. The upload frequency will dictate the reporting periods that are available to health centers. Once their data has been uploaded, health centers may login at any time, define a statistic set and peer group and generate corresponding reports. Reports will display their own data, the average of all participating health centers in the network, plus blinded data for each participating health center. Based upon their subscription, health centers may also see blinded data for all health centers in SRN’s network. In addition to the benchmark reports themselves, participating networks and health centers will have access to SRN’s Resource Center which contains comparative parameter details (i.e. how participating health centers organize their data), guidelines for interpreting and applying benchmarking results, plus other resources that support business intelligence and knowledge management. Participating health centers can also request from SRN an assessment of their own parameter set up and its suitability for data integration, business intelligence and benchmarking. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED BEING A PART OF THIS IMPORTANT INITIATIVE AND RECEIVE SAMPLES OF THE SRN COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER RESOURCES, CLICK HERE.