Australian clinical quality registries project for ACS&QHC: final report

The Australasian Rehabilitation Outcomes Centre (AROC) is a clinical registry that provides a national benchmarking system to improve clinical rehabilitation outcomes. The registry is a sub-centre within the Centre for Health Service Development (CHSD), University of Wollongong (UoW) under which it is governed. Membership of AROC covers the vast majority of rehabilitation units (public and private) in Australia. AROC is a pilot site for the testing and validation of the draft Operating Principles and Technical Standards developed by Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in HealthCare (the Commission) which is Phase 3A of the Commission's broader undertaking called 'The Australian Clinical Quality Registries Project'. Phase 1 and 2 of the project involved the standards development, technical and data design. After this testing and validation phase during Phase 3A, an evaluation process will take place (Phase 3B) followed by national recommendations (Phase 4) for Australian registries. Assessing AROC against the Operating Principles and Technical Standards will allow AROC to benchmark itself in a way not available previously. This assessment will then inform AROCs development in the future, allowing AROC to participate in the coordination and linkage of registry information in Australia.