Quality Improvement
NICE has recently published the following quality standards:
Chronic kidney disease
Glaucoma
Diabetes in adults
Other NICE quality standards
The NHS Institute’s website has a section on quality improvement, which includes various tools and best-practice on reducing delays and improving flow. See also Tackling NHS Challenges. This is a guide which highlights the most relevant tools to help you tackle a range of healthcare challenges from patient safety and quality of service to improving access and optimising capacity.
The Service Transformation range of products may also be of interest. These include:
A guide to discovery interviews to improving care
A matter of life and death
Achieving simple timely discharge from hospital
Reducing variations in care
See the NHS Atlas of Variation in Healthcare for a series of maps of variation selected from the topics identified as being of importance to particular clinical specialties. The aim is to
to stimulate the NHS to search for unwarranted variation and, by extension, to tackle the causes and drivers of that variation.
The King’s Fund’s Variations in health care: The good, the bad and the inexplicable explores possible causes of variation, shows the different ways in which variations can be measured, and analyses variations by PCT in rates of elective hospital admissions for selected procedures.
You may find the following of interest:
Review of the research on the effectiveness of health service interventions to reduce variations in health (Centre for Reviews and Dissemination)
Variation in healthcare: does it matter and can anything be done? (NHS Confederation)
eQIPP website
NHS Improvement’s website dedicated to QIPP. Featured this month: Diagnostics
Read March’s Radiology Improvement Bulletin and Pathology Improvement Bulletin.
What a difference a day makes
Delivering Quality Imaging Services for Children
Presentations from the Stroke Imaging Services Event : 8th March 2011
Radiology Improvement Toolkit
Quality and Productivity Cochrane Topics/Case Studies
NHS Evidence has published some case studies of innovative practices so that organisations can learn from one another. Also the Cochrane Topics section has some ‘implications for practice’ to help inform local practices. Recent additions include:
Email Advice service: To reduce renal out patient referrals
Service Improvement Leadership Programme: a service-led solution to quality improvement and efficiency savings
Antihistamines and/or decongestants for otitis media with effusion (OME) in children
Antibiotics for the common cold and acute purulent rhinitis
Anti-leukotriene agents compared to inhaled corticosteroids in the management of recurrent and/or chronic asthma in adults and children
This month’s tool: Clinically Prioritise and Treat
CPaT is an approach that supports trusts in introducing systematic processes to improve waiting list management. As a result, patients will be seen in accordance with their clinical priority.
See the NHS Institute’s CPaT tool. No Delays Scotland has a similar tool and step-by-step guide.
This bulletin is brought to you by Library and Knowledge Services. It aims to keep you up-to-date with clinical governance issues. At the beginning of each month, a librarian will update the bulletin with relevant information published in the preceding month. If there are areas you think we also need to cover, please let us know.