- Date published
- January 2010
- Pages
- 16
- Download publication [90kb PDF]
Background
All NHS healthcare providers will be required to produce Quality Accounts from June 2010. The purpose of Quality Accounts is to set out for the public the quality of the services that NHS organisations deliver. The intention is that by producing a Quality Account, each NHS provider is committed to improving the quality of services it delivers and inviting the public to hold them account.
The Department of Health consulted on the regulations and guidance for Quality Accounts.
The Health Foundation’s response
Our response deals with some of the detailed and specific questions asked in the consultation documents.
Our overarching comment is that we want Quality Accounts to make a contribution to improving health care quality.
We think that they have potential to do this by helping to establish a culture that:
- values accountability for success and learns from failure
- uses measurement as a sound basis for improvement
- values elements of quality that are not susceptible to measurement
- understands statistics, variation and the pros and cons of risk adjustment
- uses improvement methods to respond to the data.
We think that the role of the Board in leading the development of Quality Accounts is important. Boards need to be fully engaged in the process of developing and setting the agenda for quality accounts and to support quality improvement across their organisation.
We are however concerned that there may not be sufficient emphasis on patient safety within the Quality Accounts framework. We acknowledge that it is included in the indicators section but we suggest it should have greater prominence throughout. There is a danger that safety will be seen as a separate issue from quality, which does not seem a helpful distinction.
Conclusion
The Health Foundation is keen to make sure that NHS Providers use Quality Accounts as an active tool to improve quality. It will be important that the impact of Quality Accounts and their content are reviewed regularly and that Boards are fully engaged in their development to help ensure that a culture of continuously improving quality is developed.
