National quality improvement indicators project: an initial descriptive study

Anaesthesia Quality Improvement New Zealand developed a set of five quality improvement indicators pertaining to postoperative nausea and vomiting, pain, respiratory distress, hypothermia and a prolonged post-anaesthesia care unit stay. This study sought to assess the proportion of eligible institutions that were able to measure and provide data on these indicators, produce an initial national estimate of these, and a measure of variability in the quality improvement indicators across hospitals in New Zealand.

All public hospitals that provide a representative to Anaesthesia Quality Improvement New Zealand were eligible for inclusion. Participating institutions were required to provide the number and proportion of patients with each of the five quality improvement indicators over a continuous 2-week period between 1 June 2019 and 25 October 2019. The overall percentage of patients and the median percentage with each outcome were calculated.

A total of 79.2% of eligible hospitals participated. The median incidence of the indicators ranged from 1.67% for respiratory distress to 6.31% for prolonged post-anaesthesia care unit stay. The indicator with the largest interquartile range was hypothermia and the smallest was respiratory distress (13.48 and 2.29, respectively). A large variation was seen for prolonged post-anaesthesia care unit stay, hypothermia, pain and postoperative nausea and vomiting.

The majority of eligible institutions were able to measure and provide data on the quality improvement indicators. There was a low rate of respiratory distress with low variability. A large amount of variability was observed in the other indicators. Future studies are needed to explore the nature of this variability.