These indicators should be embraced by the Hospital Quality Department to facilitate the evaluation process. Existing organizational resources (such as the Quality Department's data, medical records, existing databases, etc.) should be used for your evaluation as much as possible. This will make your evaluation process more sustainable and avoid you having to secure additional budget allocations in the future.

• Ideal indicators to be tracked by the Quality Department are those related to the use of Health Care services (ultimate indicators).

However, the Quality Department cannot track all the indicators; this is the case with intermediate indicators (practice/process-oriented). You should plan to integrate these indicators into the day-to-day management of your clientele by using standardized tools (e.g. a COPD Care Map) which you can then collect and evaluate. This will avoid you having to measure these indicators via a chart review, which requires lots of resources (data collection, data entry, analysis).

• Hence, your regular health care practices would ensure the continuity of an evaluation system that is specifically adapted to your institution.

Evaluation is the systematic gathering, analysis and reporting of data about an intervention/
program/pathway to assist in decision-making.