Benchmarking: breakthrough results through structured analysis.

Benchmarking is the continuous process of measuring processes, services and practices against the toughest competition, or against companies recognized as industry leaders, for the purpose of identifying and adopting best practices. To facilitate this process, the Hamilton Civic Hospitals has developed a series of benchmarking templates, loosely based on the "unified model" of quality. This article presents the templates and describes their application as part of a benchmarking feedback loop.