About the Scheme

The Keele University Benchmarking Service, established in 1994, has been developed in consultation with clinicians in each pathology discipline who are nominated by their respective professional bodies, and built around feedback from participants.

It is a non-competitive programme designed “by the users for the users” which promotes the sharing of best practice information, designed so that laboratories can identify areas for cost and efficiency savings, and help demonstrate the value of their service.

Keele University Benchmarking reports are the only reports of their type in the UK to offer comparison by cluster, showing how your department compares to similar departments throughout the UK.  Data can also be analysed through our analysis tools to provide user-customisable content and comparison groups to create more meaningful and relevant information.

The reports include analysis of data in sections which include quality, workload (including individual tests), staffing, productivity, finance and cost per test/request.  Keele workload definitions have been refined and peer reviewed by discipline specific experts over the past 19 years, offering the most comparable standard available.

Separate reports are issued electronically for Clinical Biochemistry, Haematology, Histopathology and/or Cytology, Microbiology (including Virology), Immunology and Blood Sciences. The questionnaires are issued electronically, and full guidance is available from the Keele helpdesk during the completion process.

The Keele University Benchmarking Service is a non-profit making organisation, therefore subscription costs are set accordingly.  Furthermore, our prices have been significantly reduced for 2012/13 making it more affordable and offering even better value than before.

The service is peer reviewed by Fellows of The Royal College of Pathologists, and also backed by The Association of Clinical Scientists (ACS) and the Institute of Biomedical Science (IBMS).

For all enquiries please contact Gill Trigg either by phone - 01782 733755 or by email - g.s.trigg@keele.ac.uk

Alternatively, please visit our new Benchmarking “Frequently Asked Questions” page