Informing Healthcare Team Performance: Integrating Data to Improve Quality and Safety

A worldwide rising demand for health care means increasing resource investment in health systems, with the concomitant requirement for greater accountability. Greater accountability requires the generation of more and more data and information. Health care is frequently described as fragmented or siloed, and this is reflected in how data is captured, managed, and shared throughout the system. Data relating to business performance, quality, and patient safety is extracted from different systems, and its primary use is to inform senior decision makers about organizational-level performance. Meanwhile, health care teams at a local level when asked if they are performing well in relation to quality and safety are often unable to answer this question. This policy brief summarizes the results of a study undertaken as part of the Collective Leadership for Safety Culture research program to codesign a suite of quality and safety performance indicators to assist acute hospital health care teams to monitor and improve their quality and safety performance. Recommendations are presented for senior decision makers in the acute hospital setting to inform policy on the gathering and management of Quality and Safety data.