The Government has shared a new Quality Strategy for NHS-funded Care in England. Developed by the National Quality Board, the strategy aims to put quality at the centre of the NHS’s work, providing a new structured approach to making quality the organising principle for all NHS activity in England over the next decade.
It applies to system-wide, guiding national bodies, NHS leaders, the wider healthcare workforce and partners whose actions impact the quality of care in local communities.
The strategy’s definition of high-quality care is based on the following principles:
- Safety: reducing the risk of unintended or unexpected harm to patients arising from the provision of healthcare
- Effectiveness: delivering evidence-based care that optimises the outcomes that matter to people using services
- Experience: co-ordinated, compassionate and responsive care, delivered by staff who are skilled, supported and able to do their job well.
Drawing on the 10‑Year Health Plan and the Dash Review, the strategy sets out 10 enablers that support quality improvement across the whole healthcare system:
- clarifying who is responsible and accountable for quality at every level of the healthcare system
- setting clear priorities to improve the quality of care while adopting a transparent, co-ordinated and value-based approach
- strengthening leadership and management capability to create the right culture and conditions for improvement
- listening to and working with people and communities on what matters to them
- using data to manage quality, inform decisions and support accountability at all levels
- increasing transparency, making the NHS the world’s leading healthcare system for public access to information on care quality
- developing and embedding technology to underpin quality management and improvement
- aligning incentives and rewards with accessible, high-quality and productive care
- promoting innovation and research to support continuous improvement in both clinical care and how the NHS operates
- creating a more co-ordinated and improvement-focused approach to regulation.
Responding to the Quality Strategy, Dr Rosie Benneyworth, Interim Chief Executive Officer at the Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB): "We welcome the publication of the Quality Strategy and its recognition that safety is the foundation of high-quality care. The important role that the National Quality Board now has in providing strategic leadership, improving coordination across the system and creating a more coherent approach to quality and safety provides a significant opportunity to improve patient care. Strong national leadership, combined with a culture of learning and psychological safety, will be critical if the NHS is to move from reacting to harm to anticipating and preventing it.
"We support the strategy’s ambition to improve clinical outcomes, reduce unwarranted variation and tackle health inequalities. We also support its emphasis on openness, learning and improvement. Creating the conditions where staff can speak up, share concerns and learn without fear of blame is essential to delivering safer care.”
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