CQC’s Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Professor Sir Mike Richards and the Chief Executive of NHS Improvement, Jim Mackey have written to all 255 NHS hospital trusts in England to ask them to consider quality and finances on equal footing in their planning decisions.
Ahead of publishing the consultation response into the functions of the office of the National Guardian, Dame Eileen Sills has set out the principles and priorities that will guide her first months in post.
Day-to-day responsibility for smooth operational running of trusts lies with their boards, and when things go wrong, formal oversight of trust boards is provided by regulators. But between those two stools is performance management; in the current system, that sits with commissioners.
We will publish two documents covering foundation trusts’ requirements for 2015/16. This consultation includes:
our proposals for indicators to be subject to assurance in our detailed guidance for external assurance on quality reports 2015/16
our proposal to clarify guidance on how auditors should report a modified conclusion on their limited assurance work
an invitation for you to comment on who should provide the external assurance on quality reports from 2016/17
We will consider all responses in finalising these documents for 2015/16.
Presentation from NHS Transformathon. This session will show how, as a nation, Scotland is seeking to achieve large scale improvement in health and care through a combination of programme-specific activities and supporting development of sustainable QI cultures within health and care organisations. They’ll do this by sharing their experience of using a range of activities to support cultural change including the Building a QI Infrastructure Programme and Board development activities. They will also share their learning and outcomes from a specific example in the care of people living with frailty and delirium.
Patient-centred care, defined as respecting and responding to the needs and preferences of patients, empowering them to make decisions that best fit their individual needs, has been identified by the Institute of Medicine as an essential element of high-quality care.1 It can be thought of as respectfully involving the patient2 in a way that helps practitioners provide care that is concordant with their patients’ values, needs and preferences while better enabling patients to actively provide input and participate in their healthcare.3 Patients are more satisfied with their care when they feel that healthcare providers are understanding their needs, carefully listening and clearly providing information4; in addition, patient-centred care has been found to be associated with improved patient outcomes.5 In order to provide exemplary patient-centred care, one needs well developed communication skills, especially in the realm of active listening and responding to patient cues. The importance of physicians mastering the art of patient-centred communication skills can be seen as a theme in the educational objectives of medical school curricula as well as in the competencies of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. To read the full article, log in using your NHS Athens