Quality Indicators in Healthcare

-Automatic translation

A quality indicator in healthcare is a measure that indicates whether the quality of treatment and care provided is following recognised standards.

• The aim of using quality indicators is to monitor the quality and safety of healthcare services and to promote the visibility of these aspects. In this way, the healthcare services, the government, managers of healthcare institutions, and healthcare practitioners have the tools to evaluate the quality of services and make decisions on a professional and informed basis.

• Their use is intended to support healthcare practitioners and healthcare institutions in providing healthcare services, increase their awareness of quality, create competition between them for outcomes and quality, and thus contribute to improvements within the health services.

Various quality indicators

Developing quality indicators for different kinds of health services is essential, but such indicators can be used for healthcare institutional monitoring. To be able to monitor quality indicators, detailed and thorough registration and databases are needed.

It should be noted, however, that quality indicators are indicators of quality and not evidence-based science.

Publication of quality indicators

The Directorate of Health publishes annually an overview of quality indicators on its website. It also provides an overview of Iceland's health situation compared to several other OECD member countries.

Foreign websites on quality indicators

• The Joint Commission - JCAHO

• The National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators - NDNQI

• Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality - AHRQ

• The Danish National Indicator Project