Understanding Public Expectations of Healthcare Quality and Safety Regulation in Australia

The regulation of health care services has a range of goals. Improving the safety and quality of healthcare is one of them. However, there is a lack of good quality evidence about what members of the Australian community believe and expect in relation to the regulation of healthcare safety. To elicit the Australian public’s voice on issues related to the governance of health care quality and safety, we developed a survey instrument that reflected core elements of Australian approach to regulating health care safety and quality. This Policy Brief describes the results of the survey, highlighting the important areas of similarity and difference between the views of the community and existing regulatory frameworks. In summary, the general public expect a graduated approach to stakeholder responsibility, monitoring and regulatory responses to failures in the quality and safety of healthcare. However, Reliance on decentralised accreditation-centric quality improvement mechanisms is not sufficient. The community expects more centralised oversight, including strict norm-referenced monitoring and performance testing – including in-person ‘spot inspections’, rather than reliance on self-monitoring and reporting.