| Abstract: | This paper reports a survey of program evaluation and service monitoring activity in 49 Victorian community health centres. Centres generally have not made evaluation and monitoring an important part of their operations despite the rhetoric of health services policy makers and administrators. Reasons for this include a lack of staff in centres who are trained in evaluation methods; the reluctance of centre staff to divert time and resources from service provision to evaluation; and insufficient assistance to centres from the Health Commission of Victoria. “The assumptions that operating a service is equivalent to rendering service and that both are equivalent to rendering quality service are no longer being honoured as inherently valid.”1 |
