QQUIP – Quest for Quality and Improved Performance – is a five-year, £2.5 million research initiative of The Health Foundation. It has been set up to help answer three fundamental questions about healthcare in England:
- What is the current state of quality and performance?
- What works to improve quality and performance?
- Are we getting value for money from what is spent on the NHS?
The initiative responds to one of the main recommendations made in Sheila Leatherman and Kim Sutherland’s influential report, The Quest for Quality in the NHS: A Mid-term Evaluation of the Ten Year Quality Agenda, to develop a centre that can provide regular, independent reports on NHS performance in relation to effectiveness, safety, capacity, equity, patient centeredness and access.
What are we doing?
The Health Foundation has formed a five-year partnership with a research team led by Sheila Leatherman (University of North Carolina School of Public Health; Judge Institute, University of Cambridge) which includes Kim Sutherland (Judge Institute, University of Cambridge), Peter Smith (University of York) and Gwyn Bevan (London School of Economics).
The team is collecting, collating, analysing and reporting on data drawn from a wide range of sources. It is also providing coherent and accessible information on where healthcare resources are currently being spent, whether they provide value for money and how interventions in the UK and around the world have been used to improve healthcare quality.
QQUIP is intended to provide a valuable resource for clinicians, managers, researchers and healthcare policy makers. This comprehensive and independent source of data will enable them to make informed decisions and take actions that will lead to better quality of patient care.
We are also developing a concise and reliable overview of different interventions aiming to enhance the quality of healthcare. For example, working with Picker Institute Europe, we have built a picture of which interventions work to involve patients in managing their treatment and care.
QQUIP website
The website brings together data to reveal hidden national and international trends on diseases, quality of care and the cost-effectiveness of treatments and government reforms. It is aimed at healthcare policy makers, researchers, clinicians, managers and patient groups so that they can make informed decisions based on the best possible data available.
QQUIP collects and analyses data from a wide range of already published and publicly available sources including databases such as the OECD Health Data, the Department of Health, the Healthcare Commission, professional databases and peer-reviewed published studies. It houses easy to use, at a glance data on priority areas such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes and mental health.
For more information, visit the QQUIP website.
QQUIP reports
In addition to the website, the QQUIP project will produce in-depth analyses on themes such as patient involvement, regulation, incentives and IT. Each report will look at the extent to which these factors improve the quality of care provided. In 2007, QQUIP will estimate the costs and benefits of treating different diseases so that healthcare decision makers can make comparisons and informed decisions about resource allocation.
A number of reports have already been published as a result of the research undertaken by the QQUIP project team. For example, Value for money in the English NHS looks at the recent increases in spending levels and asks whether these have translated into a corresponding rise in the quality of care for patients. Other titles include Patient focussed interventions and Regulation and quality improvement.
For more information, see our Research reports.
