Indicators for the Antimicrobial Stewardship Clinical Care Standard
Indicators have been developed to support monitoring of the care recommended in the Antimicrobial Stewardship Clinical Care Standard. Clinicians and health service organisations can use the indicators to support local quality improvement activities. An indicator monitoring tool is available to support data collection.
The Commission has developed a set of indicators to support clinicians and health services in monitoring how well they implement the care described in this clinical care standard.
The indicators are a tool to support local quality improvement activities. No benchmarks are set for any indicator.
Indicator specifications
Detailed specifications for the 2020 Antimicrobial Stewardship Clinical Care Standard are available on the Metadata Online Registry (METeOR) at https://meteor.aihw.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/736878
METeOR is an Australian web-based repository of nationally endorsed data and indicator definitions, hosted by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).
Each indicator is described below and links to individual specifications are provided.
List of indicators
Indicator Monitoring Tool
The Antimicrobial Stewardship Clinical Care Standard - Indicator Monitoring Tool is available for clinicians and health services to assist with monitoring.
Antimicrobial Stewardship Clinical Care Standard - 2020
The 2020 Antimicrobial Stewardship Clinical Care Standard was released on 24 November 2020. The clinical care standard lists the updated indicator set and explains which indicators are new, revised or retired.
Transition to using the 2020 indicators
From 1 January 2022, all of the 2014 Antimicrobial Stewardship Clinical Care Standard indicators have been retired, and the 2020 indicator set should be used.
Measuring and monitoring patient experience
Systematic, routine monitoring of patients’ experiences of, and outcomes from, health care is an important way to ensure that the patient’s perspective drives service improvements and patient-centred care. This is the case in all health services, including those that prescribe, dispense or administer antimicrobials.
Patient experience measures
While there are no indicators in this standard specific to patient experience measurement, the Commission strongly encourages health service organisations to adopt the Australian Hospital Patient Experience Question Set (AHPEQS). The AHPEQS is a short 12 question generic patient experience survey which has been tested and found reliable and valid for both day-only and admitted hospital patients across a wide variety of clinical settings.
The AHPEQS question set is available for both private and public sector health services, and has been translated into 20 languages.
Patient-reported outcome measures
In Australia, patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are an emerging method of assessing the quality of health care. The Commission is leading a national work program to support the consistent and routine use of PROMs to drive quality improvement.