Review of services
Find information about how many services the healthcare provider looked at in the last financial year. In order to measure the quality of the healthcare service, providers should review all relevant data available to them.
Deciding on areas for improvement
Organisations must decide on at least three areas where they are planning to improve the quality of their services. Organisations should also provide details about how they set priorities about improvements and why and how they are planning to report back the progress to their patients and the public. Patients’ views should be taken into account when organisations decide on the priorities for improvement.
Taking part in national, local and clinical audits
A clinical audit is the process by which the quality of care and services provided are measured against agreed standards. Where services do not meet the agreed standard, the audit provides a framework where suggestions for improvement can be made.
National audits are conducted by a third party. Participating in these audits gives organisations the opportunity to compare their results with other organisations.
Local audits are conducted by the organisation itself. Here they evaluate aspects of care that the healthcare professionals themselves have selected as being important to their team.
The statements on the clinical audit demonstrate that the healthcare provider is concerned with monitoring the quality of their services and improving the healthcare provided.
Taking part in clinical research
Clinical research is a central part of the NHS, as it is through research that the NHS is able to offer new treatments and improve people's health. Organisations that take part in clinical research are actively working to improve upon the drugs and treatments offered to their patients. This statement shows the number of patients who were recruited to take part in clinical research and being treated by the healthcare provider. Participation in clinical research allows patients access to the latest drugs and treatments in development.
Goals agreed with commissioners
The Commissioning for Quality and Innovation (CQUIN) payment framework is a scheme that healthcare providers can join. It makes part of their income dependent on locally agreed priorities for improving the quality of patient healthcare.
Use of the CQUIN payment framework shows that healthcare providers and their commissioners are actively engaged in discussing the quality of healthcare provided to the local community.
What the Care Quality Commission (CQC) says about us
The CQC is responsible for ensuring that health and social care services meet essential standards of quality and safety. Healthcare providers must register their services with the CQC or they will not be allowed to operate.
The first statement gives information on a provider’s registration status. Organisations are either registered without any conditions, registered with conditions or not registered. The CQC can apply specific conditions in response to serious risks that they find. For example, it can demand that a ward or service is closed until the provider meets safety requirements, or that it is suspended or taken off the register if absolutely necessary.
The CQC also encourages improvements to healthcare services by making information about the quality of a provider’s care available to the public and by carrying out reviews and investigations about particular types of care.
The second and third statements provide information on what reviews and/or investigations the provider has taken part in and what the CQC said about the provider.
Accuracy of our data
Organisations need to collect accurate data in order to be able to define the quality of the services they provide. The statements in the data accuracy section are designed to give an indication of the quality and accuracy of the information an organisation collects.
The first statement provides information on the number of patient records held by an organisation that include a patient’s NHS number and the General Medical Practice Code for a patient’s GP practice. It is important that a patient’s NHS number is recorded in their notes to ensure the patient is correctly identified at all times and receives appropriate treatment. It is also important that the General Medical Practice Code is recorded so that information about the patient’s health and any hospital treatment received is sent back to their GP, who should then be able to treat the patient appropriately.
The second statement shows the score that a provider achieved after a self-assessment. Organisations use a toolkit provided by NHS Connecting for Health that assists in measuring the quality of the IT data systems, standards and processes used in the organisation to collect data.
The third statement provides information on the number of errors that are introduced into patient’s notes. This may occur when a clinical coder translates the written information that a clinician has provided about a patient’s diagnosis and treatment into standard codes. These codes are nationally and internationally recognised and are used by healthcare professionals and researchers to check on the outcome of a patient’s diagnosis and treatment and compare it to other patients and organisations in other parts of the country and abroad.
