The WA health system has participated in the National Hand Hygiene Initiative (NHHI) since 2009. The initiative is a program developed by the Australian Commission for Safety and Quality in
The National Hand Hygiene Initiative (NHHI) is coordinated by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. It is a key program designed to improve hand hygiene practices and reduce healthcare-associated infections across Australian health service organisations.
The initiative supports health service organisations to meet requirements under the National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards which require health service organisations to have processes in place to meet Action 3.05 Surveillance and Action 3.10 Hand Hygiene of the Preventing and Controlling Infections Standard.
Auditing program
All Australian states and territories participating in the NHHI use standardised audit tools developed by the World Health Organization to assess healthcare worker hand hygiene practices. Audit tools are available from the National Hand Hygiene Initiative (NHHI) | Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care.
Our participation
Western Australia (WA) health participates in the NHHI by conducting three hand hygiene audits (1 voluntary) a year of healthcare worker hand hygiene practices. These audits help monitor compliance and identify opportunities for improvement.
Auditor roles and training
There are two types of hand hygiene auditors:
- hand hygiene auditor educators are responsible for training and supporting hand hygiene auditors, auditing, validations of audit data and supporting the implementation of the hand hygiene program
- hand hygiene auditors conduct audits and act as role models for compliance.
The NHHI program defines the training content, format, and assessment process for both roles.
Monitoring and reporting
WA was among the first jurisdictions to publicly report detailed hand hygiene compliance data.
WA Health is committed to transparency and accountability by:
- sharing hospital performance data with the public
- supporting improvements in hand hygiene compliance.
Research indicates that public reporting can drive improvements in healthcare performance, including hand hygiene practices.
Hand hygiene data dashboards
Hand hygiene compliance data for WA is available through interactive dashboards powered by Microsoft Power BI.
These dashboards allow users to:
- explore data by health service provider, healthcare workers, peer group, moment and by year
- compare performance against the national benchmark (80%)
- data can be filtered to explore trends over time and across different organisations
- bar graphs provide:
- overall compliance rates
- compliance with specific hand hygiene moments.
Caution should be exercised when comparing or interpreting the data due to variation in sample size which may limit direct comparison between organisations.
Access the dashboards
Last reviewed: 01-07-2026