The Benson Model

Community Healthcare Services continue to face increasing demand, workforce and financial pressures. With an increasingly aging population, extensive pressures in the NHS secondary care services and growing demand on Social Care there is a need now more than ever for adult community services to transform to deliver place-based services that are person centred, efficient and effective.

The Benson model is tried and tested and uses data that is drawn from existing workforce, performance and clinical systems. The tool provides a suite of metrics delivering data, information and insights for Trust Boards, management and quality teams and for frontline staff, that are routinely, quickly and easily available – at low cost.  The Benson Model is compatible with NHS Benchmarking tools and supplements the NHS Safer Staffing tools. 

What is the Benson Model?

This online tool provides a capability that does not currently exist within the NHS , and complements existing performance, information, NHS benchmarking, and safer staffing tools. 

Quick to implement, cost-effective, and easy to use, this tool is software free. Developed over the last 10 years, the Benson Model has been applied to hundreds of projects in the community and its effectiveness validated. 

How does it work?

The Benson Model provides a monthly in depth report of ten key metrics, including productivity, allocation of clinical work, caseloads, patient complexity, face to face service delivery, administrative and planning times as well as quarterly external benchmarking with an increasing number of community nursing providers. Providers input clinical data via our secure NHS aligned tool which is then mapped to Benson Model classifications. The data is validated, aggregated and assimilated to ensure comparability and standardisation. Users can then review the metrics; 

  • Allocation 
  • Caseloads
  • Delivery times 
  • Demographics
  • Productivity
  • Referrals
  • Workforce

Why use the Benson Model?

By adopting and implementing the Benson Model, organisations get access to a wealth of data and information, enabling internal clinical teams to compare and contrast service delivery, identify any unwarranted variation, and to plan strategy to address this. 

With access to this data, key metrics can be used to build divisional and/or business unit performance reports which can be triangulated with other performance, HR, and quality information for effective review and assurance. The Benson Model is complementary and compatible with existing NHS Benchmarking Tools and will support the identification of actions required as community service providers begin to  implement the national safer staffing tool for community services. Users will get close to real-time comparative data on an accessible, intuitive, and easy to use online platform.    

Not only does the Benson Model provide Trusts with a unique view of their demand and capacity performance within individual teams and in comparison with other teams, by agreeing to combining data with other NHS Trusts, organisations are also able to see how they perform against each other through an external benchmarking report – facilitating comparison and discussion. 

Using the Benson Model, providers can benefit from:

  • Insight into performance from internal and external validation of historical data
  • A comprehensive view of team level patient complexity and its impact on staffing and caseloads
  • Identification of inefficiencies and unwarranted variation amongst internal and external teams
  • The opportunity to learn and share best practice, quality and service improvements.
  • Increased assurance on data quality, key metrics and delivery of effective operating models.
  • Insights to support future strategy development, targeting service transformation, quality and financial sustainability

To understand more about the Benson Model, please download the full brochure below, or contact us directly.

  • Benson Model Brochure
    Benson Model Brochure 2.94 MB Download
  • The Benson Model - Overview
    The Benson Model - Overview 665.69 KB Download

Would you like more information?

If you want to get more information about this subject please get in touch with our experts who would be pleased to hear from you.