Lord Darzi has published his review 'High Quality Care for All: Our Journey So Far', which examines the progress that has been made since 'High Quality Care for All' was published a year ago.
Across each dimension of quality – patient experience, patient safety and clinical effectiveness – Lord Darzi has found that there has been real progress with patients already seeing the difference.
But, he says, there is more to do. In order to drive the quality agenda further and free up clinicians’ time to do this, the report proposes:
• Refining of targets based on evidence – free up front line staff so they can focus on delivering high quality care. Remove the obsolete 13 week outpatient and 26 week inpatient performance targets, as well as reviewing data collections across the board in order to reduce the burden on front line staff;
• Clinician budget ownership – look at giving clinical teams in the acute sector ownership of their budget;
• Peer review accreditation system – create a new voluntary peer review system in which clinicians will judge the standard of their peers in order to drive up quality and achieve a ‘gold standard’ of care.
He concludes: ‘In these times of economic turbulence, I am convinced that our focus on quality will deliver a health service that meets the expectations of NHS patients, the aspirations of NHS staff and the value for money demanded by taxpayers’.
Download 'High Quality Care for All: Our Journey So Far'
