IBD Benchmarking

The second national Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) UK benchmarking has recently been published with results now available: The 2023 Service Survey | IBD UK

The benchmarking program has been developed to identify where IBD services can be improved and, to identify strengths within services and to share best practice. It was set up in response to identify gaps from the last IBD standards in 2019.

The IBD benchmarking is a wide-ranging review looking at service provision including levels of specialist staffing (the IBD team), waiting times for investigations, appointments and procedures (IBD service) and flare management.

Patients were also encouraged to take part in the benchmarking to report how they can access the service if they feel unwell and the quality of care they experience within their own hospital. Individual hospital results can be viewed on the results page.

Benchmarking sets standards and can be a useful tool for services to help improve and develop services which ultimately benefits patient care and their experience.

Conversely, it can also lead to setting the bar too high and standards which are simply not achievable for some services. Healthcare teams and providers may be left feeling their service is not good enough and this is especially relevant in the current climate within the NHS.

There may be a limit to resources, including staffing with recruitment freezes being common practice, downgrading of staff or an increase in wait times for appointments and investigations, this is not the fault of the IBD team themselves. Patients may also feel that their hospital is not providing a good enough service.

To enable the service to input the required data also relies on this data being readily available which again, some teams may struggle to achieve through lack of wider nonclinical support.

The benefit however of national benchmarking can be used to support cases for additional support and funding if needed and give recognition and pride to services and, satisfaction to IBD teams. This is especially important given the challenging times faced by many.