Abstract

At the Australian Health Ministers’ Conference of 29 February 2008, Ministers agreed to commission the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) to develop performance indicators to support the agreements that will replace the 2003–2008 Australian Health Care Agreements. The indicators were to allow for reciprocal public performance reporting and to cover the entire health and aged care system comprehensively. The objective of the work was to develop a performance indicator set by which the community could judge the performance of the system as a whole. A focus has been on performance indicators that relate to outcomes for patients and clients, which would be suitable for public reporting, and for which data are mostly already available and reported. In addition, a priority has been to ensure that the performance indicators reflect reform directions announced to date by Health Ministers, by the Council of Australian Governments and by the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission. Noting that ‘we manage what we measure’, stakeholders have emphasised that the performance indicators should be capable of driving positive changes that are appropriate to reform goals. The AIHW first identified a set of organising ‘principles’ for the performance indicator set, based on priorities expressed by Health Ministers and other stakeholders for health sector reform and ongoing service provision, and taking into consideration the National Health Performance Framework. The development of the performance indicator set included reviewing indicators currently in use in the health and aged care system in Australia and elsewhere; and undertaking an extensive consultation with health and aged care sector stakeholders, including all governments.