The Health Quality & Safety Commission is required under legislation to develop and publish regularly a set of indicators to drive improvement of the quality and safety of New Zealand’s health and disability support services.
The Commission is committed to developing these indicators in a way that complements and builds on existing initiatives in New Zealand and internationally, and learns from and involves stakeholders and key experts in the field of quality measurement.
On our website, we have summarised the process we used to develop the indicator set, and the feedback we received during the stakeholder engagement process. The summary can be viewed here: www.hqsc.govt.nz/assets/Health-Quality-Evaluation/PR/HQSI-summary-2012.pdf.
We started the process using a relatively small set of indicators to test the framework. Over time, we expect that the indicator set will change, as definitions for existing indicators are refined, new indicators are added (reflecting priorities identified by the sector or determined through the Commission’s work programme) and others are ‘retired‘ as they become less relevant.
This is the first time the Commission has published these indicators.