HIQA moves on new key indicators

Prof Jane Grimson

The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) is publishing this Friday new guidance on developing key performance indicators (KPIs) and minimum data sets to monitor the quality of healthcare.

KPIs are measurable elements of practice that can be used to assess the quality of healthcare. They facilitate the capture of healthcare trends and can provide evidence of the quality of care being provided, thus acting as alerts to identify opportunities for improvement and aspects of practice that may require further scrutiny.

Prof Jane Grimson, Director of Health Information at HIQA, said the guidance has been developed to assist individuals and organisations identify, develop or select KPIs and associated minimum data sets for the purpose of monitoring quality and safety in health and social care.

“Assessing the quality and safety of care has become increasingly important because, unless we actually measure it, we cannot determine if improvements are being made,” Prof Grimson said.

Performance monitoring is dependent on good quality information, which can only be achieved by having a systematic process to ensure that data is collected consistently both within, and across, organisations.

KPIs are an invaluable tool that contribute immensely to performance improvement, HIQA believes. However, for KPIs to be effective, they need to have clear definitions to ensure that the data collected is of high quality — that is, consistent, reliable and in keeping with shared definitions — and to enhance their validity and reliability. Valid KPIs measure what they are intended to measure and reliable KPIs will consistently produce the same result regardless of who performs the measurement, the Authority pointed out.

Using KPIs can lead to improvements in quality and safety when they are used for learning at organisational level, facilitating improvements in local service delivery rather than solely being used as a tool to evaluate providers at a national system level.