Activating benchmarking for continuous improvement

As anticipated, July did not disappoint with more than 90 people from across Aotearoa joining via Zoom for the Child and Youth and Adult stream KPI Programme forums. We often hear first-hand how stretched mental health and addiction workforce and service leaders are; however, this level of attendance reinforced how committed everyone is to making space for engaging in hui and action to continually improve services for tāngata whai ora and their whānau.

One of our own continuous improvement focuses has been to find new and meaningful ways to increase sector-wide access to the KPI Programme. As a Programme team, we have always believed the voices of all will compel us forward in the right direction, so we have been doing our best to engage as widely as possible with our workforce and to listen to their needs. A key learning has been that we need to offer a variety of events more regularly, using different engagement tools.

It isn’t always easy to confirm whether an improvement initiative is having the right impact straight away. This made the following piece of feedback from the forum even more special and encouraging for the team:

“I know the next forum is a full day one in Wellington – which I know will also have its benefits but just wanted to state the following as I will not be at that… I like how [forums] are virtual and only half a day as it enables me to dial in and participate. If it was out of town I would not be allowed to attend. Plus, my capacity is stretched so half a day still allows me to squeeze it in.” – July 2021, Adult stream forum attendee

The KPI Programme is uniquely sector led and sector owned, and it is your feedback that allows us to coordinate it in a way that is useful and aligned to sector needs and priorities. In this issue, we outline a range of different ways to keep contributing to the development of the Programme and its benchmarking tools, so make sure you check them out.

If you did miss the July forums, we have included the links to the DHB quality improvement stories and lived-experience presentations below. You can also read more about people’s experiences of the forums through their feedback to the Programme team.

We encourage you to check out the upcoming events as we begin consultation for the development of our new seclusion indicator data dashboard visualisation tools for all Programme streams, launch the first monthly benchmarking breakout session and seek expressions of interest to present at our face to face forum in October.

We look forward to continuing to co-design, co-develop and co-deliver initiatives in August that drive continuous improvement and equitable health outcomes for tāngata whai ora, whānau and communities.

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