Measuring quality of maternity care.
Health-care organisations are required to monitor and measure the quality of their maternity services, but measuring quality is complex, and no universal consensus exists on how best to measure it. Clinical outcomes and process measures that are important to stakeholders should be measured, ideally in standardised sets for benchmarking. Furthermore, a holistic interpretation of quality should also reflect patient experience, ideally integrated with outcome and process measures, into a balanced suite of quality indicators. Dashboards enable reporting of trends in adverse outcomes to stakeholders, staff and patients, and they facilitate targeted quality improvement initiatives. The value of such dashboards is dependent upon high-quality, routinely collected data, subject to robust statistical analysis. Moving forward, we could and should collect a standard, relevant set of quality indicators, from routinely collected data, and present these in a manner that facilitates ongoing quality improvement, both locally and at regional/national levels.
Department of Women's Health, The Chilterns, Southmead Hospital, Bristol, BS10 5NB, UK. Electronic address: kate.collins5@nhs.net.
Katherine J
KJ
Collins
Department of Women's Health, The Chilterns, Southmead Hospital, Bristol, BS10 5NB, UK. Electronic address: tdraycott@me.com.
Timothy
T
Draycott
D000068598:Data Accuracy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008427:Maternal Health Services / Q000592:standards*; D010043:Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care / Q000379:methods*; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D011247:Pregnancy; D058996:Quality Improvement; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care
clinical dashboard; outcome measures; process measures; quality; quality indicators