Health care quality indicators: webpage updated

Health care quality indicators: webpage updated

The Health Care Quality Indicators project (HCQI) led by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) aims to measure and compare the quality of health services in different countries. The European Commission has provided financial support for this project under several Public Health programmes.

In the context of this project, an Expert Group has developed a set of quality indicators at the health systems level for assessing the impact of different factors on the quality of health services.

The key areas of work are:

• Primary Care,
• Acute Care,
• Mental Health Care,
• Cancer Care,
• Patient Safety,
• Responsiveness and Patient Experiences,
• Strengthening Health Information Infrastructure,
• Cardiovascular Disease and Diabetes.

The project's progress is regularly presented and discussed in OECD’s Health Care Quality Indicator expert group and reported in the Quality of care chapter of the report Health at a Glance: Europe.
The OECD publishes the Health Care Quality Indicators dataset in the OECD Health Statistics database ‘OECD.Stat’.

Under the Health interventions heading, the European Core Health Indicators (ECHI) shortlist includes a specific section on health services including an indicator concerning quality of health care ‘30-day in-hospital case-fatality of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and ischemic stroke (ECHI 79)’. This indicator is implemented in the ECHI data tool together with the OECD HCQI data.

The EU-funded Euphoric project has contributed to benchmarking the outcomes of selected health care performances, supported the exchange of information on quality standards, and helped disseminate best practices and effectiveness in public health. You can find more information on this project at http://www.euphoric-project.eu.