Introduction
The National Safety and Quality Primary and Community Healthcare Standards (Primary and Community Healthcare Standards) were launched in October 2021. They aim to protect the public from harm and improve the quality of health care delivered through a nationally consistent framework, which all primary and community healthcare services can apply when delivering health care. They describe elements shared by all safe, high-quality healthcare services.
There are three Primary and Community Healthcare Standards that cover clinical governance, partnering with consumers and clinical safety.
Clinical Governance Standard
Clinical Governance Standard, where clinical governance is the set of relationships and responsibilities established by a healthcare service to ensure good clinical outcomes. It ensures that the community and healthcare services can be confident that systems are in place to deliver safe and high-quality health care, and continuously improve services.
Partnering with Consumers Standard
Partnering with Consumers Standard, which describes the systems and strategies to create a person-centred healthcare service in which patients and consumers are:
- Included in shared decision making
- Partners in their own health care
- Involved in the development and design of quality healthcare services.
Clinical Safety Standard
Clinical Safety Standard, which considers specific high-risk areas of health care commonly encountered that need to be addressed and mitigated.
The Clinical Governance Standard and the Partnering with Consumers Standard set the overarching requirements, or clinical governance framework, for the effective implementation of the third Clinical Safety Standard.