The Health Information and Quality Authority has published guidance for healthcare providers on how to improve the quality of the service being delivered to patients using key performance indicators (KPIs).

Professor Jane Grimson, Director of Health Information at HIQA said: “With increasing public focus on the quality of care provided by various organisations and individuals, healthcare providers are constantly striving to improve the quality and safety of the care they offer. Assessing service quality is critical – unless we actually measure it, we cannot determine if improvements are being made.”

KPIs can lead to real and measurable improvements in quality and safety when they are used for learning across the organisation. Through KPIs, local service providers are assisted in developing insight into safe, effective, care processes.

Professor Grimson said: “The Guidance on Developing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Minimum Data Sets to Monitor Healthcare Quality has been developed to assist anyone involved in delivering healthcare services to the public to develop and select KPIs so that they can monitor and improve the quality of the service they provide.”

This document provides clear details on what KPIs are, and how to create them, in a way that will give the service provider meaningful information that can be used to improve service delivery. They can have a positive impact on the delivery of services both at local level and on national service structure.

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 the performance monitoring process. However, for KPIs to be effective, they need to have clear definitions to ensure that the data collected is of high quality and to enhance their validity and reliability.

Professor Grimson concluded: “Valid, reliable KPIs measure what they are intended to and will consistently produce the same result regardless of who performs the measurement.”

Further Information: 

Marty Whelan, Head of Communications and Stakeholder Engagement
01 8147481 / 086 2447623
mwhelan@hiqa.ie