AusPSI

Patient Safety Indicators are measures of health care safety that make use of readily available hospital inpatient administrative data.

The AusPSIs are being developed primarily to support health services and the Department of Human Services in monitoring quality of care and patient safety. Although they will not provide the complete answer they will serve as a screening or flagging tool for potential areas of concern. They can be used to help hospitals identify potential adverse event trends that might need further study.

The AusPSIs are being developed for application to any ICD-10-AM hospital inpatient routine data that uses condition onset flags. These data are readily available and relatively inexpensive to use.

There are 18 core indicators and 7 sub indicators in the AusPSI set. These indicators have their roots in the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Patient Safety Indicator module but have been refined and adapted following detailed consideration of the indicator definitions, the data limitations/ strengths of ICD-10-AM and the Victorian clinical environment.

The AusPSIs tools will be made freely available on this website. At present all necessary technical tools are available for the translated AHRQ PSIs. This set of PSIs has been translated for use with ICD-10-AM datasets.

The AusPSIs are:

  1. Complications of anaesthesia 
  2. Death in low-mortality DRGs 
  3. Decubitus ulcer 
  4. Failure to rescue (FTR) - General
    a) FTR-Acute renal failure
    b) FTR-DVT/PE
    c) FTR-Pneumonia
    d) FTR-Sepsis
    e) FTR-Shock or cardiac arrest
    f) FTR-GI haemorrhage/acute ulcer Iatrogenic pneumothorax 
  5. Foreign body left during procedure
  6. Iatrogenic pneumothorax 
  7. In-hospital fracture 
  8. Postoperative haemorrhage or haematoma 
  9. Postoperative respiratory failure 
  10. Postoperative DVT/PE 
  11. Postoperative sepsis 
  12. Postoperative abdominal wall wound dehiscence 
  13. Accidental puncture or laceration 
  14. Transfusion reaction 
  15. Birth trauma – injury to neonate 
  16. Obstetric trauma – Vaginal delivery with instrument 
  17. Obstetric trauma – Vaginal delivery without instrument 
  18. Obstetric trauma – Caesarean delivery

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