ReviewBMJ quality & safety2021
Exploring the actionability of healthcare performance indicators for quality of care: a qualitative analysis of the literature, expert opinion and user experience.
Review in BMJ quality & safety, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 42 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
42 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 78 citations in OpenAlex.
- The contribution of benchmarking to quality improvement in healthcare. A systematic literature review.BMC health services research · 2022Pooled it
- A Bibliometric Analysis of Performance Measurement and Management in Child and Adolescent Healthcare Services.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Measuring healthcare quality in police custody: the development of quality indicators through expert consultations in the Netherlands.Health & justice · 2026Article
- Ensuring High Quality Oyster Care for People Experiencing Severe and Persistent Mental Illness - A Three-Phase Development of A Quality Monitoring Tool.Community mental health journal · 2026Article
- Defining quality of healthcare in Dutch police custody: the development of a conceptual framework for monitoring care quality through a scoping review and expert consultations.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Development and Usability of a Dashboard for Quality Monitoring and Resident-Centered Care in Australian Residential Long-Term Care: Mixed-Methods Study.JMIR human factors · 2026Article
- Determinants, patterns, and gaps in patient safety and quality of care research in Israel: a scoping review.Israel journal of health policy research · 2026Article
- Patient-reported outcome and experience measures in primary care: a scoping review of systematic collection and use.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- A comparative evaluation of time-series models for forecasting inpatient deaths and discharges against medical advice.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Correlation analysis between single disease quality management and efficiency indicators of a tertiary hospital in China.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- Implications of Data Extraction and Processing of Electronic Health Records for Epidemiological Research: Observational Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Observational
- Characterization of trends in preoperative hemoglobin A1c testing prior to metabolic and bariatric surgery: a retrospective, observational study.Perioperative medicine (London, England) · 2025Article
- Comprehensive Evaluation of Quality Indicators: Analyzing the Dutch Breast Cancer Audit.International journal of health policy and management · 2025Article
- Defining and Measuring the Goldilocks Zone in Healthcare: A Review of Metrics and Models.Health services insights · 2025Review
- A taxonomy of indicators for non-communicable diseases: agreement, definition, and contextual description using diabetes as a case study.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Transforming community-based primary health care delivery through comprehensive performance measurement and reporting: examining the influence of context.BMC primary care · 2024Article
- Developing and piloting a set of quality-of-care indicators for Romanian public hospitals as part of a national programme to fund quality.BMC health services research · 2024Article
- Acute care pathway assessed through performance indicators during the COVID-19 pandemic in OECD countries (2020-2021): a scoping review.BMC emergency medicine · 2024Article
- Benchmarking hospital clinical pharmacy practice using standardised key performance indicators (KPIs).Journal of pharmaceutical policy and practice · 2024Article
- Development of Quality Indicators for the Ultrasound Department through a Modified Delphi Method.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThis study explores the meaning of actionable healthcare performance indicators for quality of care-related decisions. To do so, we analyse the constructs of
methodsA multiphase qualitative study was undertaken. Phases included a literature review, a first round of one-on-one interviews with a panel of academics and thought leaders in the field (n=16), and a second round of interviews with real-world users of performance indicators (n=16). Thematic analysis was conducted between phases in order to triangulate findings in a stepwise process.
resultsCommon uses of healthcare performance indicators were differentiated within micro-meso-macro contexts of healthcare systems. Each purpose of use signals different decision-making tasks, and in effect information needs. An indicator's fitness for use can be appraised by three clusters of considerations: methodological, contextual and managerial. Methodological considerations gauge an indicator's perceived importance, engagement potential, interpretability, standardisation, feasibility of remedial actions, alignment to care models and sensitivity to change. Information infrastructure, system governance, workforce capacity and learning culture were found as enabling contextual considerations. Managerial considerations influencing an indicator's use in practice were found to span the selection of indicators, data collection, analysis, display of results and delivery of information to decision-makers.
conclusionThe actionability of a healthcare performance indicator should be appraised by its alignment with the intended purpose of use beyond aggregate healthcare system levels, in combination with the extent to which methodological, contextual and managerial fitness for use considerations are met. Striking a better balance between the importance weighted to an indicator's statistical merits and emphasis put to its fitness for purpose and use is needed for indicators that are ultimately actionable for quality of care-related decision-making.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.