Benchmarking technology as a factor of sustainable development of healthcare organizations

Currently, heads of healthcare organization consider how to provide affordable healthcare of high quality with the lowest expenditures under the conditions of growing volumes of healthcare services for the population. To ensure the sustainability of a healthcare institution it is required to introduce a number of organizational improvements and innovations. It addresses all the key areas of healthcare organization activities: process management, resource management, monitoring, measurement, analysis, research, improvement, innovation, and training. Therefore, managers responsible for achieving long-term goals of the organization need an effective tool to implement changes and development activities with minimal resources. This tool is a marketing technology called benchmarking, which is widespread in the areas of industry, trade, services, construction, energy, etc. It has been considered efficient in the healthcare industry for evaluation of new treatments and quality of healthcare services, assessment of medications effectiveness and patients’ safety, etc. However, benchmarking technology as a factor of sustainable development of healthcare organizations has not been sufficiently studied. It emphasizes the significance of the present study. The article presents a review of the literature, which enables to conclude that benchmarking is applicable to implement organizational improvements and innovations. The author suggests an approach to the use of benchmarking technology for sustainable development of a healthcare organization.