Engaging with Quality in Primary Care

In brief

Clinicians need to focus fully on quality improvement to ensure their interventions achieve full potential. There is much excellent practice happening in primary care across the UK. But it is well known not everyone is delivering the best possible outcomes for patients. 

This programme helped several clinical teams to understand and apply quality improvement techniques and measure the results. This is turn will add to the evidence base on quality improvement so that others can benefit.

The £5m programme was launched in 2006 for NHS and professional bodies, academic institutions and charities. In all, nine very distinctive projects were selected to take part and began work in April 2007. Over three years, they have been working to improve quality, addressing specific health issues, conditions and challenges. These range from the management of back pain to tackling domestic violence and reducing health inequalities. 

Training and support was led by the Improvement Foundation working closely with Karen Picking and Associates. Evaluation is being carried out by RAND Europe and Brunel University's Health Economics Research Group (HERG). 

Learning has yet to conclude but emerging issues already have implications for health policy, practice, education and training. These include:

• the importance to quality improvement initiatives of clinical leadership
• successful team-building and recruitment
• effective communication
• strategies for involving patients and making the most of computer technologies.

Overall, this programme underlines the need for quality improvement to be made central to the healthcare system.