This project supports delivering better quality health care for all New Zealanders. It aims to achieve this by initiating the work required to measure and report how consumers or patients actually experience the health system. What happened to them and how did it make them feel? By capturing this consistently and coherently across New Zealand’s health system, this information can be used to make substantial improvements to both the experience and the actual quality of care received. This is a critical investment for New Zealand’s health system and an investment for all the people of New Zealand.
Currently, New Zealand has no consistent approach to measuring, reporting and managing patient experience performance, at the national and local level. This presents an opportunity to develop a comprehensive national framework, with national priorities and mechanisms to drive focused improvement initiatives. One of the key objectives of the New Zealand Health Quality and Safety Commission (the Commission) is to lead and coordinate work across the health and disability sector. The Commission’s overall programme of work is underpinned by the New Zealand Triple Aim framework for quality and safety outcomes. This includes a specific aim of ‘improved quality, safety and experience of care’. The patient experience indicators, proposed as a result of this project, will form part of the Commission’s broader Health Quality & Safety Indicator set.
Project objective
The objective of this project was to identify consumer experience indicators at three levels:
- National: Commission indicator framework
- District Health Board (DHB) level: Accountability
- Service-level: Improve services.
These indicators can then be used to improve the quality and effectiveness of consumer/patient care and experience on a national and local level. They can also be used by the Ministry of Health (the Ministry) to strengthen accountability.