The Australian Council on Healthcare Standards care Evaluation Program.

With the assistance of the medical colleges, the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards (ACHS), through its Care Evaluation Program, has established clinical performance measures which will assist both internal and external review of care and enable hospitals to compare their quality of patient care with that of other hospitals.

Errors in drug prescribing.

This study reports on early results following the introduction of one measure of medication prescription errors, that being the prescribing of a drug for which there is an 'alert' notice, into The Australian Council on Healthcare Standards Accreditation process. Characteristics of hospitals reporting of zero and non-zero errors were analysed using a logistic model. After adjusting for other hospital characteristics and duration of data collection, hospitals over 100 beds were more likely to report medication errors compared to hospitals with 1-100 beds. Reporting of these prescribing errors was not associated with the particular type or location of the hospital. However, as a result of monitoring of this indicator, a number of hospitals reported an increase in their quality assurance activities. It is a sentinel event and not a rate based indicator and, as a performance measure, is of greater value as an internal, rather than external, review mechanism.