Sector Performance Indicators

A scorecard to measure success and guide improvement in the blood sector

One of the NBA's core strategic priorities is to embed capability around performance reporting through a Blood Sector Performance Scorecard. The key objective in establishing this scorecard is to ensure integration of blood sector performance measurement with broader government health performance and accountability agendas.  The National Health Performance Framework 2009 describes indicators for three tiers of the health sector to provide a comprehensive picture of the population’s health and how the health system is performing in meeting health needs. The blood sector scorecard will conform to the Health System Performance framework (Tier 3).

While the sector scorecard is derived from the wider health sector framework, it also accommodates three key perspectives derived from the National Blood Agreement as summarised below.

  1. Supply security: this perspective comprises measures of any interruption to supply, including product recall for safety reasons. For supply to be secure in the long term, and adequate to meet clinical need, it must remain affordable for governments.
  2. Clinical Safety and Quality: this is a clinical perspective focused on patient outcomes and safety and quality of processes used to deliver these outcomes. This perspective comprises measures of the impact of health care on the patient’s clinical status and functioning. Indicators of this type are often described as the ‘gold standard’ of service effectiveness indicators on the basis that health services must first and foremost be accountable to the populations they serve.

In pursuing the primary policy objectives of the National Blood Agreement, a number of secondary policy aims prescribe the third perspective:

  1. Sector Management: this perspective comprises measures of the control and implementation of policy and governance in the blood sector. A high performing blood sector requires effective and responsive stewardship that demonstrates positive impacts on sector resources, processes and outcomes.

Preliminary internal work at the NBA has identified a number of blood sector performance measures that vary in the timeframes and resources necessary to implement them.

The NBA's direction in relation to data is described in the National Blood Sector Data and Information Strategy and Scorecard 2013 – 2016 which has now been endorsed by the Jurisdictional Blood Committee and is available for download from the Data & Research page.