Quality Improvement Series | BMJ | Health Foundation
The BMJ, in partnership with and funded by the Health Foundation, are launching a joint series of papers exploring how to improve the quality of health care delivery. The quality improvement series will discuss the evidence for systematic quality improvement, provide knowledge and support to clinicians and ultimately will aim to help improve care for patients.
Full detail at BMJ
Unlocking the potential: supporting doctors to use clinical audit| Royal College of Physicians | Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership
This report aims to increase the engagement of doctors in quality improvement activity through greater accessibility to the outputs of national clinical audit. It is intended to bridge the current disconnect between identifying what needs to be improved and the capability to actually improve in practice.
Key recommendations include:
Full report: Unlocking the potential: Supporting doctors to use clinical audit
NHS England’s Chief Digital Officer, Juliet Bauer, examines achievements so far, such as developing patient facing tools and outlines plans for the future.
In the spring NHS England will plan to publish guidance to help local organisations ensure that systems they develop or commission, to bring together patients’ information in one place and known as a Personal Health Record, are as high quality and connectable as possible.
They will also release an early version of an NHS digital services manual drawing together new and existing design and development tools guidance, and begin initial testing of a single system for verifying the identity of those requesting access to digital health records and services.
NHS England are also building an open and connectable platform that will make it easy for innovative developers to plug their technology in to our single, joined up NHS app, and start making a difference to patients. The app will be live by the end of the year.
It’s clear that NHS England programmes are already having an impact on patients, helping them conveniently access the NHS and discover the very best advice and support so that they can care for themselves too.
Their role is to help these developments go further, faster so that we constantly improve the care and experience we offer patients.
There is also a new road map for digital health and care services which shows what has already been achieved and sets out time frames for future improvements.
Further information is available from the blog post here
NHS Employers
Case study looking at Ashford and St Peter’s Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s approach to quality improvement.
Part of our series focusing on staff involvement for quality improvement, the case study looks at how Ashford and St Peter’s has used innovative staff involvement techniques to help all staff improve quality of patient care. Beginning as an initiative solely for medical staff engagement, it has now been adopted across the organisation.
Establishing quality improvement approaches which actually work has much to do with suitable leadership and organisational culture, according to a new King’s Fund report.
This report explores the factors that have helped organisations to launch a quality improvement strategy and sustain a focus on quality improvement. It identifies three common themes for successfully launching a quality improvement strategy: having a clear rationale; ensuring staff are ready for change; understanding the implications for the organisation’s leadership team in terms of style and role.
The report finds that NHS leaders play a key role in creating the right conditions for
quality improvement. Leaders need to engage with staff, empower frontline teams to
develop solutions, and ensure that there is an appropriate infrastructure in place to
support staff and spread learning.
Full reference: Jabbal, J| Embedding a culture of quality improvement | Kings Fund
NHS Employers has published Making it better: staff engagement for quality improvement. This case study highlights work that the Sheffield Teaching Hospital has undertaken on staff engagement as part of its programme of quality improvement, such as the collaborative development of the Sheffield Microsystems Coaching Academy, Listening into Action groups and the creation of trust values. The case study also highlights the benefits the organisation has seen as part of its ‘Making it Better’ transformation programme.
King’s Fund
This briefing makes the case for quality improvement to be at the heart of local plans for redesigning NHS services. It does this by drawing on existing literature and examples from within the NHS of where quality has been improved and describing how this was done
