Key Performance Indicators

Key performance indicators (KPIs) help you define and measure progress towards organisational goals. As the primary means of communicating performance across the organisation, KPIs should focus on a range of areas. Once an organisation has analysed its mission, identified all its stakeholders and defined its goals, KPIs offer a way of measuring progress toward these goals.

Some KPIs are set by the Department of Health (DOH) and as such we are mandated to report against them i.e. 18 week Referral To Treatment and A&E 4 hour wait. Other performance measures whilst not mandated are regularly monitored by an organisation to help us to know ‘How we’re doing’. These include length of stay, mortality rates, readmission rates and day case rates can be analysed. For example the length of stay for a particular procedure, may be different from the national benchmark. Therefore this may highlight where a process can be investigated and changed.

As well as looking at our Trust's rates, it is also a good idea to look at peers and national performance. There will be a varied selection of KPIs, benchmarked against national data, now published every quarter throughout the year. The data published is sourced from national returns and the latest data is published where possible.

Website NELFT Benchmarking 20-21-Qtr 4.pdf [pdf] 529KB

Clinical Audit

Clinical audit is a system to measure performance against set standards and to make improvements where necessary. The aim is to improve and maintain the quality of the service we provide.