Furthering the quality agenda in Aboriginal community controlled health services: understanding the relationship between accreditation, continuous quality improvement and national key performance indicator reporting

A rapidly expanding interest in quality in the Aboriginal-community-controlled health sector has led to widespread uptake of accreditation using more than one set of standards, a proliferation of continuous quality improvement programs and the introduction of key performance indicators. As yet, there has been no overarching logic that shows how they relate to each other, with consequent confusion within and outside the sector. We map the three approaches to the Framework for Performance Assessment in Primary Health Care, demonstrating their key differences and complementarity. There needs to be greater attention in both policy and practice to the purposes and alignment of the three approaches if they are to embed a system-wide focus that supports quality improvement at the service level.