State of safety and quality of health care

The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care has just released its annual report on the state of health care safety and quality.
Windows into Safety and Quality in Health Care 2009 offers safety and quality insights in a number of settings and from various perspectives.
The report emphasises the three key elements of the Commission’s proposed National Safety and Quality Framework that safe high quality care is always:

• Patient focused
• Driven by information, and
• Organised for safety

Topics covered include clinical deterioration, general practice, hospital mortality rates and antimicrobial stewardship. Other chapters focus on the analysis of patient complaints, sentinel events and other forms of reporting, hospital indicators and the impact of clinical registries.