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Showing results for tags 'Quality improvement'.
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Content ArticleIn 2021. the National Quality Board (NQB) refreshed its Shared commitment to quality, which describes what quality is and how it can be delivered in integrated care systems (ICSs). It reflects the ambition set out by the NQB in 2015: "We want improving people’s experiences to be as important as improving clinical outcomes and safety." This document provides an overarching context for work on improving experience of care as a principal and integral part of delivering safe and effective care. It sets out a shared understanding of experience and what the best possible experience of care looks like, and outlines key components for delivering the best possible experience of care: Co-production as default for improvement Using insight and feedback Improving experience of care at the core priority work programmes The NQB was set up in 2009 to promote the importance of quality across health and care on behalf of NHS England and Improvement, NHS Digital, the Care Quality Commission, the Office of Health Promotion and Disparities, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, Health Education England, the Department of Health and Social Care and Healthwatch England.
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News Article
Struggling trusts’ CEOs must ‘self certify’ to NHS England
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Bosses at struggling trusts must sign new commitments to national leaders about how they are approaching the task of clearing their elective and cancer backlogs, under a new protocol drawn up by NHS England. National leaders have written to CEOs and chairs of trusts in NHSE’s bottom two “tiers” for elective and cancer performance, telling them they must fill out a new “board self certification” by 11 November. It requires them to sign that they have carried out a list of 12 separate actions to try to improve. In addition to some fundamental administrative requests, these include increased scrutiny around issues such as theatre productivity, list validation, especially for non-admitted lists, and cancer pathway redesign. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 28 October 2022 -
Content ArticleSince 2018, Nicola Burgess has led a team from Warwick Business School that evaluated the partnership between the English NHS and the Virginia Mason Institute in the USA. The partnership aimed to implement a systematic approach to quality improvement (QI) in five English NHS trusts and learn lessons about how to foster a culture of continuous improvement across the wider health and care system. In this blog, she summarises six key lessons from the evaluation report for health and care leaders looking to build a systematic approach to QI. Build cultural readiness as the foundation for better QI outcomes Embed QI routines and practices into everyday practice Leaders show the way and light the path for others Relationships aren’t a priority, they’re a prerequisite Holding each other to account for behaviours, not just outcomes The rule of the golden thread: not all improvement matters in the same way
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Content Article'State of Care' is the Care Quality Commission's annual assessment of health care and social care in England. The report looks at the trends, shares examples of good and outstanding care, and highlights where care needs to improve.
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Content ArticlePatients are increasingly feeding back about their healthcare experiences online and NHS Trusts are adopting different approaches to responding. This study in the journal Digital health aimed to explore the sociocultural contexts underpinning three organisations who adopted different approaches to responding to online patient feedback. The authors identified a range of barriers facing organisations who ignore or provide generic responses to patient feedback online and demonstrated the sociocultural context in which online interactions between staff and patients can be used to inform improvement. However, they highlight that this represented a slow and difficult organisational journey.
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Content Article
LifeQI: Improvement methods cheatsheet
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Implementation of improvements
Improving the quality of products or services and maintaining acceptable levels of performance are critical factors in the success of any organisation. There are many improvement methods available which include Six Sigma, Lean Management, Lean Six Sigma, Total Quality Management, Model for Improvement and Kaizen just to mention a couple. These methods have differences in approach and application, normally stemming from the differing focus of the methods. The choice of which improvement method to use can sometimes be divisive. One single method is not necessarily better than another, with their strengths lying in different areas. LifeQI have put together a cheatsheet for you to help you choose the most appropriate one for your project and organisation. This Improvement methods cheatsheet compares the different methods according to multiple aspects which you can use as guidelines to help your decision-making process. Note: You will need to fill in your details to download the cheatsheet. -
Event
The NHS Patient Safety Conference
Patient Safety Learning posted an event in Community Calendar
The NHS Patient Safety Conference, in partnership with Patient Safety Learning, is a long-standing virtual and in-person event series that has welcomed over 1500 NHS professionals through its doors. In February 2021, further updates and changes were made to the NHS Patient Safety Strategy. The most significant strategy update is the new commitment to address patient safety inequalities, with a new objective added to the safety system strand of the strategy. This event series provides a timely platform to discuss these changes. Key event topics are run across 3 key pillars: Insight Adopt and promote fundamental safety measurement principles and use culture metrics to better understand how safe care is. Use new digital technologies to support learning from what does and does not go well, by replacing the National Reporting and Learning System with a new safety learning system. Introduce the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework to improve the response to an investigation of incidents and implement a new medical examiner system to scrutinise deaths. Improve the response to new and emerging risks, supported by the new National Patient Safety Alerts Committee Share an insight from litigation to prevent harm. Involvement Establish principles and expectations for the involvement of patients, families, carers, and other lay people in providing safer care. Create the first system-wide and consistent patient safety syllabus, training, and education framework for the NHS. Establish patient safety specialists to lead safety improvement across the system. Ensure people are equipped to learn from what goes well as well as to respond appropriately to things going wrong. Ensure the whole healthcare system is involved in the safety agenda. Improvement Deliver the National Patient Safety Improvement Programme, building on the existing focus on preventing avoidable deterioration and adopting and spreading safety interventions. Deliver the Maternity and Neonatal Safety Improvement Programme to support a reduction in stillbirth, neonatal and maternal death, and neonatal asphyxia brain injury by 50% by 2025. Develop the Medicines Safety Improvement Programme to increase the safety of those areas of medication use currently considered the highest risk. Deliver a Mental Health Safety Improvement Programme to tackle priority areas, including restrictive practice and sexual safety. Work with partners across the NHS to support safety improvement in priority areas such as the safety of older people, the safety of those with learning disabilities and the continuing threat of antimicrobial resistance. Work to ensure research and innovation support safety improvement. All organisations are committed to patient safety, but how do leaders ensure that they’re doing all they can to deliver safe and effective care? Join Dr Sanjiv Sharma, Executive Medical Director at Great Ormand Street Hospital for Children, and Helen Hughes, Chief Executive of Patient Safety Learning for a presentation at 9.05am. Dr Sharma will outline their ambitious patient safety transformation journey, how they are designing and delivering an innovative safety systems approach. Embedding Patient Safety Learning’s new standards for patient safety, hear how GOSH’s self assessment has informed the development of prioritised action plans, strengthened governance and leadership engagement and cross organisation collaboration. Helen Hughes, Chief Executive of Patient Safety Learning, will outline why a standards based approach to patient safety is needed and the benefits it can bring. Register -
Event
THIS Space 2022
Patient Safety Learning posted an event in Community Calendar
untilOrganised by The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute, THIS Space aims to share learning on what works in healthcare improvement, what doesn’t, and why. This year there are over 30 speakers and more opportunities for networking and interaction with colleagues, sessions on imaginative ways of understanding problems and evaluating solutions, and updates on the latest evidence. THIS Space aims to: provide a focus for knowledge sharing in healthcare improvement stimulate innovation and fresh thinking help researchers to develop the habits, knowledge, skills, and experiences to support their professional growth connect colleagues from across different disciplines who share a common goal be a means of accelerating the development of the field of the study of healthcare. For researchers, patients, carers, NHS staff and anyone with an interest in the evidence base for improving the quality and safety of healthcare. Register -
Content ArticleA broken hip or ‘hip fracture’ is a serious injury, which each year in the UK leads to around 75,000 people needing hospital admission, surgery and anaesthesia, followed by weeks of rehabilitation in hospital and the community. The National Hip Fracture Database (NHFD) is an online platform that uses real-time data to drive Quality Improvement (QI) across all 163 hospitals that look after patients with hip fractures in England and Wales. This report highlights key research carried out using data from the NHFD in 2021, and makes a number of recommendations to improve treatment and outcomes for patients with hip fractures.
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Content ArticleIn this blog, Saffron Cordery, Interim Chief Executive at NHS Providers, examines progress on the Government's manifesto pledge to build 40 new hospitals in England by 2030. Known as the New Hospital Programme (NHP), many of these projects are facing serious delays, with seven of the 40 not yet having a completion date. In a recent survey by NHS Providers, nearly two in three leaders said delays to the programme affected their ability to deliver safe and effective patient care, with all those facing delays reporting cost implications. Saffron highlights the opportunity the NHP presents to boost healthcare and renew services, and argues that the impact on communities will be huge if the new hospital plans are scrapped.
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Content ArticleIn this position statement, the National Quality Board (NQB) outlines: Key requirements for quality oversight in Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) The role of System Quality Groups (formally Quality Surveillance Groups) NQB work to support quality oversight in ICSs
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Content ArticleThe PDSA - a four-step model for improvement - has been used to support improvement in healthcare for many years now. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) describe it as ‘shorthand for testing a change — by planning it, trying it, observing the results, and acting on what you learn. It is the scientific method, used for action-oriented learning in real-life situations. It is common to all improvement methodologies.’ In this blog, LifeQI takes a look at why the ‘Plan-Do-Study-Act’ or PDSA cycle is so widely used within healthcare organisations. It delves into the benefits – and any disadvantages – of using PDSAs in healthcare and how you can use them to drive quality improvement.
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Content ArticleHealthcare has, in many ways, always been a form of ‘learning system’. Driven by a diverse community of stakeholders, including health care professionals, patients and the public, a learning health system (LHS) uses internal and external knowledge to continually learn about and improve patient care. However, while LHSs have huge potential to support service transformation and population health, there is a lack of consensus about what an LHS actually is, and how to get started. This research report from the Health Foundation helps people understand LHSs and how they can be developed. It is the final output of HDR UK’s Better Care Catalyst Programme’s Policy and Insights workstream, which researched the barriers and enablers for implementing LHS approaches in the UK. It also identifies a range of opportunities and actions that can be taken by policymakers and system leaders to advance the LHS agenda across the UK.
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Content ArticleThe Covid-19 pandemic triggered a very sudden and widespread shift to remote consulting in general practice. Many patients and healthcare professionals have welcomed the convenience, quality and safety of remote consulting, but there are inherent tensions in choosing between remote and face-to-face care when capacity is limited. This report by the Nuffield Trust explores the opportunities, challenges and risks associated with the shift towards remote consultations, and the practical and policy implications of recent learning.
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Content Article
This is part of our series of Patient Safety Spotlight interviews, where we talk to people working for patient safety about their role and what motivates them. Sarah and Jaydee are working on an innovative project at NHS Dorset Integrated Care Board (ICB) to ensure general practice is a central part of improving patient safety across services. They talk about the value and challenges of collaborative working, how they are tailoring their offer to fit the needs of local GP practices, and making patient safety a core part of training for all healthcare professionals. -
Content ArticleThe National Quality Board (NQB) has refreshed its Shared Commitment to Quality to support those working in health and care systems. The publication provides a nationally-agreed definition of quality and a vision for how quality can be effectively delivered through ICSs. The refresh has been developed in collaboration with systems and people with lived experience and has a stronger focus on population health and health inequalities. The NQB was set up in 2009 to promote the importance of quality across health and care on behalf of NHS England and Improvement, NHS Digital, the Care Quality Commission, the Office of Health Promotion and Disparities, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, Health Education England, the Department of Health and Social Care and Healthwatch England.
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Content ArticleRestrictive practices are things that limit the rights of a person, like being able to move around freely. Restrictive Practice is used to stop a person from doing behaviours of concern. These Specialised Services Quality Dashboards (SSQD) are designed to provide assurance on the quality of care by collecting information about outcomes from healthcare providers. SSQDs are a key tool in monitoring the quality of services, enabling comparison between service providers and supporting improvements over time in the outcomes of services commissioned by NHS England.
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Content ArticleAcute prescribing forms a large part of the daily workload for GP practices. Quality improvement (QI) methodology can be used to help improve prescribing processes and ensure that prescribing work is managed by the right member of your team, safely and effectively. This toolkit is designed to help primary care multidisciplinary teams, including pharmacotherapy services, safely improve their acute prescribing processes in line with the Essentials of Safe Care. An acute prescription is defined as any prescription without a serial or repeat mandate.
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Content ArticleThese standards for the clinical care of adults with sickle cell disease were produced by the Sickle Cell Society in collaboration with a broad multi-disciplinary group of healthcare providers, patients and support groups.
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Content ArticleCompassionate leaders place quality of care at the heart of what they do, and respect and empower people drawing on and delivering care to achieve this together. This article sets out NHS England's vision for developing compassionate, inclusive leadership, highlighting that it results in better outcomes for everyone. It sets out the following four priorities: The NHS Leadership Academy will soon be publishing new NHS Leadership Competency Frameworks for system leaders. We support these frameworks and ask each of our professional bodies, colleges and employers to review their own systems to ensure that our leaders have the skills to lead compassionately today, with curiosity to transform our services for tomorrow. We commit to supporting compassionate, inclusive leadership and doing what we can to create the conditions for it, including addressing issues that stand in the way such as bureaucracy and misaligned policy. This leadership is crucial to developing and maintaining an open and transparent culture committed to learning and continuous improvement, that is responsive and accountable to the public. We will go further to open up the recruitment pool for future leaders and will support the recruitment and development of a diverse talent pipeline with the right skills, behaviours and values to be our leaders of today and tomorrow. We will support those leading ICSs to develop a new kind of system leadership, which inspires collaboration, diversity of thought and experience, and always puts the well-being of people drawing on and delivering services first. ICS implementation guidance on effective clinical and care professional leadership can now be found here. We will lead by example and ensure that our people have the tools to support compassionate behaviours. This will require a continuous approach to lifetime learning and a growth mindset, based on an agile and evolving way of seeing the world.
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Content ArticleThis guidance from NHS England aims to support Integrated Care System (ICS) leaders as they develop their approach to quality management, providing clarity on how quality concerns and risks should be managed through systems. It provides an overarching approach to quality risk response and escalation, including guidance on routine, enhanced and intensive quality assurance and improvement activity.
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EventuntilJoin Kayleigh Barnett, Senior Improvement Advisor at Aqua who will share her experience in using Appreciative Inquiry methods to create additional value for learners in a quality improvement (QI) programme aimed at aspiring senior leaders. Appreciative Inquiry is increasingly used as the basis for building a structured learning process and this session will present a case study, and provide practical ideas for you to consider. Ensuring that Appreciative Inquiry processes are included in any part of an organisation can also contribute to psychological safety. Psychological safety is the belief that you won’t be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. Kayleigh has worked at Aqua for six years and is the Delivery Lead for Appreciative Inquiry. She is an accredited Appreciative Inquiry Practitioner from the International Academy of Appreciative Inquiry. Her other areas of work are quality improvement and human factors. The case study she will present has also been featured in the September edition of the Appreciative Inquiry Practitioner journal. Register
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Content ArticleThis blog by Victoria Vallance, Director of Secondary and Specialist Care at the Care Quality Commission (CQC) discusses how engagement with frontline NHS maternity staff has informed the CQC's inspection approach, and is being used to support improvements in care. She highlights that recent reviews and reports highlight recurring concerns that affect maternity safety: the quality of staff training, poor working relationships between obstetric and midwifery teams, and a lack of robust risk assessment. She then goes on to talk about an event held by the CQC that brought together staff from NHS maternity services across England to discuss the challenges that they face and seek their views on what needs to change to overcome them.
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Content ArticleHealthcare Inspectorate Wales (HIW) is the independent inspectorate of the NHS and regulator of independent healthcare in Wales. This annual report highlights key findings from HIW's regulation, inspection and review of healthcare services in Wales. It demonstrates how HIW carried out its functions and outlines the number of inspections and quality checks it undertook during 2021-22.
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Content ArticlePolypharmacy refers to the prescription of many medicines to one patient. As more people live longer with multiple long-term conditions, the number of medicines they take often increases. This can have a significant burden on the person managing and trying to adhere to multiple medicines regimes, and can also be harmful. The Academic Health Science Networks (AHSN) Network's Polypharmacy Programme aims to support healthcare professionals to identify patients at potential risk from polypharmacy, and to support better conversations about medicines. Based on the recommendations of the National Overprescribing Review (NOR) published in September 2021, the programme aims to achieve the following outcomes: A national network of Polypharmacy Communities of Practice, all working to address the system-wide challenges of problematic polypharmacy in their geographies. Routine use of the NHSBSA Polypharmacy Prescribing Comparators to identify and prioritise patients for a shared decision-making Structured Medication Review. Increased confidence amongst the primary care prescribing workforce to safely stop medicines identified to be inappropriate or unnecessary. A change in patient expectations – to anticipate having a shared decision-making conversation about their medicines regularly, especially as they get older. A contribution to the evidence base around how to help patients to feel more empowered to open up about their medicines issues. A contribution to the evidence base around how to tackle problematic polypharmacy.
