Sherlock Benchmarks

Sherlock Benchmarks are often called the "gold standard" to measure and manage health plan performance. They are critical tools to enhance operational performance and competitive position. They also support strategic initiatives ranging from management of the product portfolio, vendor negotiations, outsourcing and business combinations.

The highly valid, well-populated benchmarking reports provide an unbiased ranking and helps prioritize cost management activities to have the greatest impact on improving your health plan's overall operating performance. The current environment rewards organizations that optimize their costs, and the Sherlock Benchmarks are an appropriate and necessary tool to achieve this goal.

The twenty-sixth annual Sherlock Benchmarks supplies comprehensive and highly granular financial and operational metrics to help health plans identify whether they operate at best practice and which functional areas provide the highest returns on management efforts to enhance plan performance. The broad scope of the metrics facilitates drill-downs to identify specific operational issues that can be used to map solutions to performance variances.

The broad scope and deep granularity of the benchmarks are shown in the Tables of Contents found in the matrix below. Sherlock Benchmarks are provided in two electronic forms and hard copy upon request. The PDF version permits users to copy the reports for use throughout their organization in a form that is identical to the hard copies. The Microsoft Excel ® version allows desktop access to each analysis and metric of the Reports.

We estimate that the 2023 Benchmarks will represent the cumulative experience of nearly 1000 health plan years, and that more than 30 health plans serving approximately 66 million members are participating in 2023. Since July of 2020, participants and licensees together serve more than 208 million insured, or most Americans covered by private insurance. Consulting firms use our benchmarks in service to their clients and our Benchmarks have been used for public policy purposes. Some citations follow.