4. We recommend the development of an IHS Report Card that will include both process indicators (e.g. IHS’ operations and strategic decisions; public participation and representation; distribution and types of services and service providers) and outcome indicators (e.g. medical, lifestyle/behavioural, and
socio-environmental indicators of community health status; efforts to address inequities and injustice within the rostered community).
Consistent with the principle of empowering communities through access to information, the IHS Report Card must be made available to all rostered members as well as the general public, thereby enabling the public to make more informed choices about the IHS they wish to belong to. The IHS Report Card is one means of holding IHSs accountable to their members for its operations, costs and outcomes. It is also a tool to assist IHSs in identifying areas of strength and areas for improvement, in setting priorities and planning, and in supporting the identification of best practices and benchmarking throughout the province. To this end, the data collected and measured must be reliable, relevant, predictive, clearly operationally defined, and useful in helping IHSs continuously improve (Nelson et al., 1995).