Indicators required for assessment to the National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) Standards
Advisory AS22/01 - Advice on implementing the updated Delirium Clinical Care Standard outlines requirements around implementation of the standard for health service organisation accreditation.
The advisory highlights indicators 1a, 2 and 4b as requirements for accreditation. Health service organisations will now be required to provide evidence that the policies described in these indicators have been implemented and that their use is monitored.
The advisory also clarifies the requirements for the transition between the 2016 and the 2021 Delirium Clinical Care Standard. Assessment against the new standard will commence in September 2022.
Measuring and monitoring patient experiences
Systematic, routine monitoring of patients’ experiences of, and outcomes from, health care is an important way to ensure that the patient’s perspective drives service improvements and person-centred care. This is the case in all health services.
Patient experience measures
While there are no indicators in this standard specific to patient experience measurement, the Commission strongly encourages health service organisations to adopt the Australian Hospital Patient Experience Question Set (AHPEQS). The AHPEQS is a short 12 question generic patient experience survey which has been tested and found reliable and valid for both day-only and admitted hospital patients across a wide variety of clinical settings.
The AHPEQS question set is available for both private and public sector health services, and has been translated into 20 languages.
Patient-reported outcome measures
In Australia, patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are an emerging method of assessing the quality of health care. The Commission is leading a national work program to support the consistent and routine use of PROMs to drive quality improvement.
PROMs are standardised, validated questionnaires that patients complete, without any input from healthcare providers. They are often administered at least twice to an individual patient – at baseline and again after an intervention, or at regular intervals during a chronic illness. The information contributed by patients filling out PROMs questionnaires can be used to support and monitor the movement of health systems towards person-centred, value-based health care.
PROMs are being used to evaluate healthcare effectiveness at different levels of the health system, from the individual level to service and system levels. There is growing interest across Australia and internationally in the routine interrogation of patient-reported outcome information for evaluation and decision-making activities at levels of the health system beyond the clinical consultation.
Useful resources from the Commission
If you have any questions about the Delirium Clinical Care Standard please email ccs@safetyandquality.gov.au.