the standards were set up by the australian commission on safety and quality in health care acsqhc to drive care of a uniformly high quality across the country they are applied to all hospitals private and public across all states covering ten priority areas including quality governance hospitalacquired infection medication safety and clinical handover see box for further detail there has been broad agreement from stakeholders that the new standards are a positive move forward promoting greater clinical involvement and more directly addressing specific quality issues than other standards