Quality improvement and risk management activities
The service has a quality improvement and risk management framework with appropriate single discipline and multidisciplinary activities and projects addressing consumer involvement, access, and appropriateness, effectiveness, safety and efficiency of treatment programmes. The service submits data to the Australasian Rehabilitation Outcomes Centre (AROC) and regularly reviews its performance against benchmarks established by AROC.
Demonstrating the standard
5.1 Procedures exist to ensure evaluation of the quality of services provided. Quality management follows a recognised process and is undertaken by an established hospital accreditation organisation recognised in Australia or New Zealand.
5.2 Evaluation of outcomes remains a major strength of rehabilitation medicine services. This is achieved by monitoring selected procedures, collecting data and assessing information, feeding back to the staff, taking action and reviewing results. These steps form the continuous quality management process. The service should record rehabilitation outcome data on all patients and contribute to AROC data collection.
5.3 The service should regularly document the ACHS Rehabilitation Medicine Clinical Indicators16.
5.4 Feedback is actively and regularly sought from patients, families, carers, staff, suppliers and the users of any service provided by the facility.
5.5 The service actively promotes the principles of evidence based clinical practice for all professional staff employed within the service.