The Department of Health and the NHS Information Centre have published a list of 232 indicators of high quality care, intended to help clinicians drive up the quality of care they deliver to patients.
The publication of the 200 indicators forms the first step in developing measures that will enable clinicians to easily measure the quality of their care and benchmark performance.
The quality indicators were a key recommendation of Lord Darzi’s report High Quality Care for All, in which the health minister noted that high performing teams already measure the quality of care they deliver and benchmark their work.
The Indicators for Quality Improvement will highlight areas for improvement and track changes clinicians implement. Clinicians can choose from the list the indicators that are most relevant to their work.
Each indicator covers the three dimensions of high quality care: patient safety, effectiveness of care and patient experience.
Lord Darzi said: "These quality indicators have been developed in partnership with frontline staff. This initial list is just the start of a NHS wide resource that will challenge and stimulate NHS staff to drive up the quality of care they deliver to patients."
He added: “At this stage, the aim is to enable clinicians to fully understand the indicators, their methodology and source. Within the next few months, we will publish data that will enable local clinical teams to compare themselves with others as the basis for local quality improvement.”
The initial list of indicators has been developed based on feedback on more than 400 acute care indicators already in use. The Royal Colleges were also closely consulted in the development of the acute indicators.
The DH says that over the next five years the list of will be further developed to improve depth of coverage across all care pathways and quality dimensions.
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