frequently asked questions

Most Members have their BIG Number calculated annually to measure year-over-year progress. It is the theoretical savings your organization could achieve if every functional centre operated at, or at better than, the best quartile performance level of your peers.

The BIG Benchmark Survey presents your operational performance results compared to all BIG Members (currently over 115 Ontario hospitals).

Most Members subscribe to the BIG Peer Benchmark Report Series to create their own peer groups and to leverage our pre-defined industry peer groups (ie. teaching, small and large hospital organizations).

Members subscribing to the Peer Benchmark Report Series receive specific performance detail for every functional centre in their organization.

Also included are: summary of overall results and by major functional centre groups; Administration, Nursing Inpatient, Ambulatory Care, Diagnostic & Therapeutic, Community Health & social Services, and Research.

That is entirely up to you. With our peer selection tool you can pick your own peer hospitals. If you are not sure which hospitals are the best comparators, please contact us and we will be pleased to make some suggestions.

We have worked with LTCHs to develop similar benchmarking tools and are currently preparing an annual survey to include the results on-line. There will also be some work involved in preparing the MIS trial balance in a comparable format. Please contact us to discuss how we can help your organization benchmark operational efficiency.

Standard membership in the BIG Community is free and requires sharing of the MIS Trial Balance data file. All Members receive complementary access to the Annual BIG Benchmark Survey.

Most Members choose to subscribe to the Peer Benchmark Report Series in order to track their year-over-year BIG Number opportunity progress. For specific cost details, please send an email to [email protected] with your specific questions.

At BIG Healthcare, the security of your data is our highest priority. Our team uses the best tools and engineering practices available to build and maintain the platform. You can rest assured that we’ve implemented multiple levels of security to protect and back up your data. No outside organizations or users will ever have access to your data or reports.

Our platform uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)/Transport Layer Security (TLS) to protect data in transit between our reporting applications and our servers; it’s designed to create a secure tunnel protected by 128-bit or higher Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption.

Our applications and infrastructure are regularly tested for security vulnerabilities and hardened to enhance security and protect against attacks.

The BIG Healthcare reporting platform is designed with multiple layers of protection, including secure data transfer, encryption, network configuration, and application- and user-level controls that are distributed across a scalable, secure infrastructure.

This is our annual healthcare industry survey of our Members’ operational performance indicators. Every year, BIG securely imports the MIS Trial Balance data of over 115 Ontario hospitals into its proprietary BIG data management platform. From this we deliver the essential benchmarks necessary for hospitals to identify critical opportunities to gain operating efficiencies.

Most Members subscribe to this report series to access our peer group management tools. By creating their own peer groups, the resulting performance indicators are more relevant and actionable.

This series includes the functional centre summary and detail reports and also features the primary BIG Number sets. These are the theoretical savings your organization could achieve if every functional centre operated at, or at better than, the best quartile performance level of your peers.

In addition, the series now includes the Performance Indicator Distribution Graph, which provides a valuable visual overview of an organization’s performance by grouping indicators by quartile (ie. best, median, worst). It is excellent for inclusion in senior and/or board-level presentations.

Yes! The Custom Benchmark Reports Series currently includes reports such as Skill Mix, Content of Care, Global Analysis and Budget Scenarios that many of our Members use to drive more advanced analyses and planning exercises.

In addition, BIG provides consulting services to those Members who wish to move beyond the data and look for opportunities improve performance.

The best quartile (BQ) is the point at which your organization would be performing better than 75% of your peers.

Performance benchmarking is the process of comparing one’s actual performance to that of others to identify opportunities to further improve one’s own performance.

“To measure is to know. If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it” – Lord Kelvin

Healthcare organizations in Ontario and across Canada continue to face unrelenting pressure to contain and reduce the cost of operating the healthcare system while continuing to provide high quality patient care services. No longer can healthcare organizations strive to be average and are continually being pushed and challenged to be top performers in all facets of healthcare service…quality, outcomes, effectiveness and costs. Healthcare funding is becoming tighter and dollars that an organization cannot save through efficiencies may become dollars taken away from services.

Benchmarking is a tool that could help your organization become a top performer. Organizations realize several benefits from measuring and monitoring operational efficiency, including:

• Improve cost management processes
• Support operational planning and budgeting
• Monitor/evaluate impact of organization / operational changes
• Document/justify impact of changes in volume & patient mix
• Provide a basis for resource allocation
• Exposure to new ways of thinking and expanded possibilities
• Improved service delivery by importing best practice management and work processes
• Accelerated and sharper focus on continuous improvement
• Elimination of redundant or unnecessary activities
• Confirming that current practices and/or performance are appropriate and/or best achievable
• More efficient processes