All of the following are examples of applications of internal and external physician benchmarking, EXCEPT ______.

The correct response is that patient days do not typically serve as a direct application of internal and external physician benchmarking. Benchmarking in healthcare often focuses on metrics that allow for performance comparisons between physicians or practices, particularly in areas directly impacted by medical practice, such as cost-efficiency, productivity, and quality of care.

Cost per procedure, revenue per physician, and patient satisfaction scores are key performance indicators that can be effectively benchmarked. They allow healthcare organizations to evaluate how their performance stacks up against established standards or other practices. Cost per procedure gives insight into financial efficiency, revenue per physician indicates productivity levels, and patient satisfaction scores provide valuable feedback on the quality of care from the perspective of the patients.

In contrast, patient days generally refer to the total number of days that patients are hospitalized and may not reflect the performance of individual physicians in the same way. Instead, it is more associated with hospital metrics rather than physician benchmarking specifically. Thus, patient days do not contribute to the physician-focused comparisons that benchmarking seeks to achieve.