Furthering the quality agenda in Aboriginal community controlled health services: understanding the relationship between accreditation, continuous quality improvement and national key performance indicator reporting
Beverly Sibthorpe A C , Karen Gardner A and Daniel McAullay B
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A Research School of Population Health, College of Medicine, Biology & Environment, The Australian National University, ACT 2601, Australia.
B Kurongkurl Katitjin, Edith Cowan University, 2 Bradford Street, Mount Lawley, WA 6050, Australia.
C Corresponding author. Email: bsibthorpe@bigpond.com
Australian Journal of Primary Health 22(4) 270-275 https://doi.org/10.1071/PY15139
Submitted: 4 September 2015 Accepted: 17 December 2015 Published: 6 May 2016
Journal Compilation © La Trobe University 2016
Abstract
A rapidly expanding interest in quality in the Aboriginal-community-controlled health sector has led to widespread uptake of accreditation using more than one set of standards, a proliferation of continuous quality improvement programs and the introduction of key performance indicators. As yet, there has been no overarching logic that shows how they relate to each other, with consequent confusion within and outside the sector. We map the three approaches to the Framework for Performance Assessment in Primary Health Care, demonstrating their key differences and complementarity. There needs to be greater attention in both policy and practice to the purposes and alignment of the three approaches if they are to embed a system-wide focus that supports quality improvement at the service level.
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