Health Foundation's response to CQC State of Care report

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has today launched its report its State of Care report.

Richard Taunt, Director of the Policy at the Health Foundation, responds: 'People working in the NHS want to deliver high quality care: but we know that often they can’t. They are battling against the odds – for example having to deal with poor data, hostile working environments, too few staff and little or no support. However, it is clear that motivation to improve quality and safety is very high in the NHS. As today’s CQC report highlights, improving quality of care is not just about the money.

'From the Health Foundation’s work over the last decade, we know that improving safety requires leaders to create an open, supportive culture for staff to work in, and timely and relevant data about the safety and quality of services. This has been shown by a number of our improvement programmes, such as Safer Clinical Systems, which ran for six years in hospitals in England.

'We agree wholeheartedly with the CQC that learning and continuous improvement sits at the heart of outstanding care. With the establishment of NHS Improvement, it is essential that this diagnosis is now backed up by actions to support the NHS to deliver this.'

Notes to editors

Media contact

Mike Findlay

Senior Media Manager

T: 020 7257 8047        E: mike.findlay@health.org.uk