A Quality Account is a report about the quality of services by an NHS healthcare provider. The reports are published annually by each healthcare provider, including the independent sector, and are available to the public.
Who produces a Quality Account?
Most organisations providing healthcare arranged and funded by the NHS, produce a Quality Account. This includes independent sector and charitable organisations.
Organisations classed as 'small providers' because of their relatively low level of NHS income and relatively small number of staff members are not required to produce a Quality Account.
There are also exceptions for some types of healthcare. Currently, Quality Accounts do not need to be produced about primary care or NHS continuing healthcare. Primary care refers to services provided by GP practices, dental practices, community pharmacies and high street optometrists. NHS continuing healthcare refers to a package of continuing care arranged by the NHS to be provided outside hospital for people with ongoing healthcare needs.
Find more information about NHS continuing healthcare in our common health questions section.
How is the 'quality' of the services defined?
Healthcare providers measure the quality of the services they provide by looking at:
- patient safety
- the effectiveness of treatments that patients receive
- patient feedback about the care provided
What information can be found in a Quality Account?
A healthcare provider will have to answer a questionnaire in relation to the quality of healthcare they provide and give a detailed statement about the quality of their services.
Every Quality Account will include:
- A signed statement from the most senior manager of the organisation. Managers will describe the quality of healthcare provided by the organisation they are responsible for. Within this statement, senior managers should declare they have seen the Quality Account; that they are happy with the accuracy of the data reported; are aware of the quality of the NHS services they provide, and understand where the organisation needs to improve the services it delivers. The statement is also an acknowledgement of any issues in the quality of services currently provided.
- Answers to a series of questions that all healthcare organisations will have to provide. This includes information on how the healthcare provider measures how well it is doing, continuously improves the services it provides, and how it responds to checks made by regulators such as the Care Quality Commission (CQC). Guidance on how to answer each question is given to all providers to ensure the questions are answered in the same way. Find more detail in Information about the questions asked.
- A statement from the organisation detailing the quality of the services they provide. Clinical teams, managers, patients and patient groups may all have a role in choosing what to write about in this section, depending on what is important to the organisation and to the local community. At the end of each Quality Account you will find a statement from the provider’s main commissioner (buyer of their NHS services) on what they think of the provider’s Quality Account.
- You may also find statements from local Healthwatch (these replace Local Involvement Networks (LINks) from April 2013) and the Overview and Security Committee (OSC). These groups represent patients and the public on healthcare issues.
