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History of Compare Benchmarking & Best Practice

ACMA's Compare Services were developed in response to ACMA members expressing the need for national benchmarks for case management metrics. In accordance with ACMA's mission to support the evolving practice of hospital/health system case management, ACMA the association developed a benchmarking system for avoidable delays and days. This system, initially developed as a pilot project, rapidly grew into a national subscription service owned and managed by ACMA.

It became apparent that the comparative model developed for avoidable delays could work for other metrics that, like avoidable delays/days lacked other sources of national benchmarking information. ACMA leadership then undertook to expand the Compare model to benchmark denials and readmissions.

Today, benchmarking for these metrics is offered to hospitals subscribing to ACMA's Compare bencharking and best practice services. In addition, ACMA has leveraged the Compare database to help identify "best practices" in reducing delays, and sharing this knowledge through subscriber educational events.

Milestones

  • April, 2004 - Members identify need to ACMA for methodology to benchmark avoidable delays
  • January 2005 - ACMA convenes task force to investigate / develop avoidable delay benchmarking
  • April 2005 - ACMA begins testing benchmarking at three Beta I hospitals
  • August 2006 - ACMA begins Beta II testing with 10 hospitals
  • June 2008 - ACMA launches Compare AD nationally and begins accepting additional subscribers
  • August 2008 - ACMA completes partnership agreements with Allscripts and ACS MIDAS+
  • January 2009 - ACMA completes partnership agreement with Morrisey Associates
  • January 2010 - ACMA launches Denials benchmarking pilot
  • March 2010 - Compare AD tracking / benchmarking extended to include avoidable days, in addition to occurrences
  • April 2010 - ACMA reaches 50 subscribing facilities
  • April 2010 - ACMA holds first User Group meeting and subscriber educational event in San Antonio
  • May 2010 - ACMA launches Compare AD Online, offering an online delay tracking interface for hospitals without a commercial case management system
  • September 2010 - ACMA launches Readmissions benchmarking pilot
  • December 2010 - ACMA launches benchmarking for avoidable delays, denials, and readmissions as an integrated toolkit