Clinical Quality

What is Clinical Quality?
Clinical Quality can be defined as the degree to which health services increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge.  Clinical Quality may be considered as a synthesis of up to six different dimensions: 

1.   Effectiveness
Healthcare that is adherent to an evidence base resulting in improved health outcomes for individuals and communities based on need - Examples include:
The use of policies, procedures, guidelines and protocols
The implementation of NICE guidance and the guidance of other professional bodies.

2.   Efficiency 
Healthcare that is delivered in a manner which maximises resource use and avoids waste - Examples include:
Ensuring our theatres and catheterisation laboratories run optimally
Having bed occupancy consistent with the delivery of high quality care by appropriately trained and competent staff.

  3.   Accessibility
Healthcare that is timely, geographically reasonable and provided in a setting where skills and resources are appropriate to need - Examples include:
Meeting the government’s waiting time targets
Delivery of care from GP referral to ultimate treatment within 18 weeks (by December 2008)

4.   Patient Centeredness
Healthcare that takes into account the preferences and aspirations of our service users and the culture of their communities - Examples include:
Meaningful involvement of patients and the public in our business affairs (e.g. through committees) 
Sampling of opinion through regular local satisfaction surveys
Participation in national surveys for opinion of the quality of care
Collection of evidence regarding the impact of our treatments on the whole patient through the assessment of quality of life.

5.   Equity
Healthcare which does not vary in quality because of personal characteristics, such as age, gender, ethnicity, race, geographical location or socio-economical status - Examples include:
The analysis of the provision of care segmented by age, sex, ethnicity and checking for equity of treatment to all.

   6.   Safety
Healthcare which minimises risk and harm to service users - Examples include:
Incident reporting
Analysis of healthcare outcomes such as infection rates, survival rates and complications
Within safety there is the added opportunity to learn from both claims and complaints made against the Trust by analysing the reasons for them being made.   What is learnt may be fed back into the organisation to ensure the circumstances under which incidents occurred, or claims and complaints were made, do not happen again.

Supporting the six dimensions is the need to ensure strong leadership for Clinical Quality and system-wide change resulting in continuous improvement.   The Trust has a Clinical Quality Strategy, progress against which is reviewed monthly by the Trust’s Clinical Quality Committee.   The strategy sets out improvements for the next five years across the entirety of the organisation and within the six specific clinical quality dimensions.