A Quality Account is a report about the quality of NHS services provided by an NHS healthcare provider. The reports are published annually by each provider and are available to the public.
Quality Accounts aim to enhance accountability to the public and engage the leaders of an organisation in the quality improvement agenda.
The regulations state that Quality Accounts must be published by 30 June each year following the end of the reporting period. They should be published electronically on NHS Choices or another website if NHS Choices is not available at the time of publication. A copy must also be sent to the Secretary of State.
Healthcare providers should also email qualityaccounts@dh.gsi.gov.uk by June 30 with a copy of their Quality Account or provide a link to the website it is published on.
Most organisations already use a system to publish and maintain their profile pages on NHS Choices and these organisations can now upload their Quality Accounts to their profile page. Organisations without this facility (including ambulance trusts and some community providers) should email a copy to UploadQualityAccount@dh.gsi.gov.uk. However, the obligation will still fall to the healthcare provider to ensure the Quality Account is made available on a website by June 30.
The Quality Account should be sent as a PDF (including meta tags and description) and the email should clearly state in the subject bar that the document needs to be uploaded and published on the NHS Choices Quality Accounts pages. Gradually more and more healthcare providers will be able to edit their profile pages themselves.
For queries relating to profile pages on NHS Choices and the content management system please contact thechoicesteam@nhschoices.nhs.uk.
