What is the IBD UK Alliance Benchmarking Programme?
The Benchmarking programme supports IBD services to recognise areas of good practice and identify opportunities for improvement, measured against the IBD Standards.
It includes:
- the Service Survey, completed by individual IBD services.
- the Patient Survey, completed by people living with IBD who use those services.
Together, these surveys provide valuable insight into the delivery and experience of care across the UK.
The most recent Service Survey and IBD Patient Survey took place in 2023, providing an important picture of IBD care and treatment across the UK following the Covid-19 pandemic.
The IBD UK Alliance is currently considering plans for future benchmarking activity and will share further information as this work develops.
IBD UK Alliance Benchmarking 2023
The most recent round of IBD UK Alliance benchmarking took place in 2023 and brought together insight from services and people living with IBD across the UK.
A total of 64% of IBD services took part in the Service Survey, including 126 adult services and 24 paediatric services. Through the IBD Patient Survey, we received responses from 17,645 people living with IBD, as well as parents, carers and guardians representing children and young people using paediatric services.
Together, the Service Survey and IBD Patient Survey provide a valuable picture of how care and patient experience aligns with the IBD Standards. The benchmarking process helps identify areas of good practice, highlight variation in care and experience, and support opportunities for improvement across services.
Individual service-specific reports were developed to help participating services recognise strengths, reflect on patient feedback, and identify areas where resources and quality improvement activity may be needed. National and Devolved Nations reports also provided important insight into the wider state of care across the UK.
The findings highlighted a decline in aspects of patient experience of care since the previous benchmarking exercise in 2019, reflecting the significant pressures faced by health services in the years following the Covid-19 pandemic. At the same time, the benchmarking results provide a clear foundation for shared learning, service development, and continued quality improvement ahead of future benchmarking activity.