Assessment of Quality of Health Care in England
Gill Harvey, Ph.D Senior Research and Development Officer/ Head of Quality Improvement Royal College of Nursing Institute Radcliffe Infirmary
ASSESSMENT OF QUALITY OF HEALTH CARE IN ENGLAND
Introduction
Thank you for the kind invitation to take part in this international seminar. It is an honour and a pleasure to be here and to bring greetings from my colleagues in the United Kingdom.
The quality of patient care is a fundamental concern to all those involved in health care delivery and we have much to learn from each others' experiences in seeking to bring about improvements at a local, national and international level. In this paper, I aim to share with you some developments in quality assessment in health care in England. I will begin by describing the different approaches that have been used to evaluate and improve quality in health care. This will include a consideration of the different experiences of the medical and nursing professions.
Having presented this general overview, I will then describe a practical approach to applying quality improvement that has been used in a wide range of clinical settings. Finally, I will conclude the paper by summarising the current status of health care quality assessment in the UK, with reference to developments within the field of clinical effectiveness and evidence based health care.
Background
Underpinning the many changes in the health service in the UK in recent years, there has been a central concern with quality of service provision. This has resulted in increased pressure to demonstrate and improve quality at all levels of the service and
