In this section :
Tracking Your Success
Key Indicators to track your progress
The Canadian Quality and Patient Safety Framework package includes key indicators to help you track progress towards improving quality and patient safety. The indicators should help you create appropriate performance measures for each objective. Each indicator ‒ when measured using a national, jurisdictional, or local data source ‒ will offer insight into your success in improving quality and patient safety.
We aimed to create an indicator set that is both comprehensive and practical. Each indicator was selected based on:
- Its relevance to the objective.
- How comprehensively it reflects the objective.
- The existence of data sources that can be used to measure the indicator.
- The adaptability of the indicator to various local contexts.
- The availability of national data to facilitate interjurisdictional comparisons.
We also strived to keep the total number of recommended indicators low. In total, the Framework contains 18 indicators across 13 objectives. In most cases, an objective can be tracked by a single indicator.
Measuring your success
The indicators should help you create appropriate performance measures for each objective. Each indicator ‒ when measured using a national, jurisdictional, or local data source ‒ will offer insight into your success in improving quality and patient safety.
The indicators are not required to be measured using a specific data source. You should identify data sources for each indicator that are suitable to your context. We have, however, identified example data sources you can use as a guide in developing your own measures and for cross-jurisdictional comparisons. We encourage you to build measures for indicators with data that best represent your own context and jurisdiction.
As you measure the indicators, we encourage you to look for ways to compare results across various sociodemographic and geographic groups ‒ including underserved populations. These comparisons can help you see whether objectives are being met equitably across these sub-groups. Some of the indicators are worded in a way that encourages these comparisons. You should look for ways to measure equity wherever possible.
Finally, this set of indicators, along with the example data sources, is intended to be a ‘living document.’ Some sectors, such as the acute care sector, are better represented by currently available data and ‒ as a result ‒ better represented in our recommended data sources. As newer and better indicators and data sources become available ‒ including those that better represent other sectors ‒ we will work to update these indicators accordingly.
For any questions, comments or to share your experience using the Framework, please contact qualityservicesforall@healthstandards.org.
