International Quality Improvement Exchange

2008 Exchange

The Health Foundation and the Danish Society for Patient Safety hosted 'Driving quality in healthcare in Europe: an exchange to accelerate improvements' in Denmark in January 2008.

This exchange provided a chance to discuss quality improvement in healthcare with other senior leaders responsible for formulating and implementing policy from eight European countries: Denmark, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Scotland and Sweden. These countries have much in common, including universal health cover, active quality improvement programmes and challenges such as ageing populations and rising costs.

The annual exchange, the third in a successful series, was held at Comwell Borupgaard, Snekkersten, near Copenhagen. The main topic was patient safety and the exchange explored the following main themes:

• What level of safety does the public expect and what can we deliver? At what price?
• What contribution can electronic information systems make to improving patient safety and what are the risks?
• What mix of regulatory, support and campaigning approaches is most effective in improving patient safety?

> Read the report of the 2008 Exchange

2006 Exchange

In December 2006 The Health Foundation and ZonMw, the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development, co-hosted an exchange between healthcare leaders from eight European countries and invited  speakers.

This was the second exchange between countries actively driving quality improvements. The purpose of the meeting was to provide an informal opportunity for healthcare leaders to hear about and discuss developments in quality improvement policy and practice and to share experience, with the aim of accelerating improvements.

The countries participating in the exchange were Denmark, England, France, Germany, Norway, Scotland, Sweden and The Netherlands. The challenges in healthcare are similar in each country and all eight countries have in common universal healthcare coverage.

The meeting, facilitated by Professor Tom van der Grinten, discussed three themes: How can reforms to national health systems such as the introduction of stronger market forces be used to improve quality? How can quality improvement become one of the drivers of cost containment and reduction? How can we use evidence about the performance of health services to achieve improvements in quality?

> Read the report of the 2006 Exchange

2005 Exchange 

This built on the success of the inaugural International Quality Improvement Exchange which we hosted in December 2005 in Oxfordshire.

> Read the report of the 2005 Exchange