Ensuring the validity of labor productivity benchmarking.

Limitations of high-level metrics, such as FTEs per adjusted occupied bed, can cause them to be misleading when used to compare a hospital's labor productivity with that of peers. Rather than serving as the sole basis for management decisions, these metrics should be used as a means to determine whether a department-level productivity assessment is warranted. When using an outpatient conversion factor (OCF) for such a benchmarking analysis, the hospital's OCF should be comparable to the median OCF of the comparison group of hospitals. Similarly, when a case mix index (CMI) adjustment is used, the analysis should allow for differences between the hospital's CMI and the median CMI of the comparison group.