Quality improvement

This section introduces the quality improvement theme. Resources to support this theme are:

Introduction

All health care systems strive to provide safe and good quality health care; improve patient experience, tackle inefficiencies and update practice in the light of evidence from research. The health departments of each of the four countries in the UK have developed standards for the NHS in order to monitor these aspects of delivery. These set out common requirements for services and staff and promote continuous quality improvement.

The focus on quality has been heightened by various initiatives. In England Lord Darzi’s NHS Next Stage Review report put “quality at the heart of everything we do” (Department of Health 2008, p.47), with the emphasis on care that is personal, effective and safe. The Coalition Government’s vision is set out in ‘Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS’ and commits to establishing improvement in quality and healthcare outcomes as the primary purpose of all NHS-funded care, placing patient safety “at the heart of the NHS” (Department of health 2011, p.21). The NHS Scotland Quality Strategy similarly emphasises the provision of “high-quality, person-centred, clinically effective and safe health care services” (Scottish Government 2010, p.32), highlighting how these act as the key drivers for quality improvement. The Strategy describes the priority areas for action and the improvement interventions required.

As a result the quality agenda is being moved forward in different ways. In England the detail of NHS reform is being established through the Health and Social Care Bill (Department of Health 2012).

In Northern Ireland a review of health and social care has identified twelve major principles for change (Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety 2011).

New approaches to quality improvement processes and ways of measuring quality of care and using this information to improve performance are currently being developed and implemented - for example developments around quality indicators and clinical dashboards.

In Wales the 1000 Lives Plus programme provides a national lead in supporting improvement activities (1000 Lives Plus 2012). In England the Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention programme (QIPP) aims to improve the quality of care in the context of a difficult economic climate and reduced budgets (Department of Health 2011b; NHS Information Centre for health and social care 2012).

An event hosted by Healthcare Improvement Scotland in 2011 brought together practitioners experienced in quality improvement to discuss approaches to quality improvement. The meeting established patient-centredness as the key driver for improvement and identified five factors associated with successful change, also recognising the need to better develop and support improvement practitioners (MacGregor and Moir 2012).

The strategy and standard documents for each UK country can be found in the four country perspectives section of this Clinical governance resource which can be accessed from Clinical governance.

References

The items in this reference list are available online. They were last accessed on 27 January 2012. Some of them are in PDF format - see how to access PDF files.

1000 Lives Plus (2012) 1000 Lives Plus website.

Department of Health (2012) Health and Social Care Bill 2011. DH website. For continued information about the Bill see the news section of the DH website at Health and Social Care Bill.

Department of Health (2008) High quality care for all: NHS Next Stage Review final report. London: The Department.

Department of Health (2011a) Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS. London: DH.

Department of Health (2011b) Quality and productivity. DH website.

Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (DHSSPS) (2011) Transforming your care: a review of health and social care. Belfast: DHSSPS.

MacGregor M and Moir E (2012) Health Foundation blog: Next steps for the quality improvement community in Scotland. Health Foundation website.

NHS Information Centre for health and social care (2012) Supporting the Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention programme. NHS IC website.

Scottish Government (2010) NHSScotland Quality Strategy - putting people at the heart of our NHS. Edinburgh: Scottish Government.