At the 12th ERAS® World Congress in Singapore, ERAS® coordinators from St Vincent’s and Eastern Health sat down together with their ERAS® Essentials data and did something that rarely happens: they compared it live, in the same room.
There were no presentations or pre-prepared slides. Just two teams, their real ERAS® data open in the ERAS® Interactive Audit System (EIAS), and an honest conversation about what the numbers revealed and what was driving them.
What is ERAS® Essentials?
ERAS® Essentials is a protocol within the ERAS® Interactive Audit System (EIAS), developed in line with ERAS® Society research. Unlike specialty-specific protocols, it can be applied across a broad range of surgical procedures, including both elective and emergency surgery, using a focused set of core compliance measures.
It is designed for teams that want to implement best-practice perioperative care across an entire hospital without starting within a single surgical specialty. For many organisations, it is the entry point into structured ERAS® measurement. It also provides a practical framework for larger health systems looking to scale ERAS® practice across multiple units and departments in a standardized way.
Live benchmarking in practice
The session began with a direct comparison of ERAS® Essentials data from different units across both hospitals. Looking at the results side by side in real time, the discussion quickly moved beyond the numbers to the realities behind them.
When one team showed strong performance in a particular area, the other wanted to understand how they achieved it. When challenges were shared, the conversation turned to what had been tested, what had failed, and what had genuinely helped.
Practical adjustments, small process changes, and lessons that rarely make it into formal guidelines were exchanged openly — the kind of knowledge that only comes from teams doing this work every day.
That is what benchmarking is really for. Not rankings or league tables, but creating a structured opportunity for meaningful peer-to-peer learning.
Why ERAS® Essentials enables this kind of exchange
Because ERAS® Essentials uses the same core compliance measures across surgical specialties, teams from different hospitals — with different patient populations and surgical focuses — can still compare data in a meaningful way. That shared framework is what makes benchmarking valuable.
This is where the scalability of ERAS® Essentials becomes tangible: not only is it practical to implement across a health system, but once teams are using it, they can learn from one another in ways that accelerate improvement across the organisation.
If you are interested in ERAS® Essentials and how it could work for your team, find out more at: Solution – Encare
