Making Scotland’s NHS even safer
21 Aug 2014 04:11 PM
New reviews set to further improve quality of care.
The quality of care offered in Scotland’s NHS will be subject to additional new reviews in a bid to continue driving up standards and improving outcomes for patients.
The new independent reviews, led by Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS), are part of the Scottish Government’s continued commitment to build a safer and more effective health service.
The rolling reviews will be focussed on improving care, building on the high standards already delivered every day by our NHS. They will complement the current joint inspections of care for older adults carried out by HIS and the Care Inspectorate and the inspection of hospital cleanliness by the Healthcare Environment Inspectorate.
The expert review teams will be made up of health specialists and patients, who can use their personal experience of the NHS to inform the work.
The teams will carry out inspections primarily focussed on the quality of care, but underneath that also looking at a range of issues including staff levels, patient and staff experience.
Health Secretary Alex Neil said:
“The Scottish Government is already a world leader in providing a safe, effective and person-centred health service.
“Reduced mortality, shorter waiting times and lower rates of hospital associated infections all point to a safer and higher quality NHS. This success reflects the relentless commitment of Scotland’s NHS staff to deliver the right care, first time, every time and the success of our current inspection programmes.
“NHS boards across Scotland have made been absolutely pivotal to these achievements. But we must do more, across our health service to go on delivering improvements for patients – in particular as we strive to deliver our 2020 vision for health care in Scotland against the considerable challenge of an ageing population
“These new reviews will first and foremost focus on the quality of care. But they will add to our scrutiny regime by considering the whole system, including staff levels, and patient experience.
“The reviews will also play an important part in ensuring that our NHS continues to be open and honest to those it serves – Scottish patients.
“As well being truly open and transparent our NHS also needs to reflect on best practice and support staff to emulate success and spread good practice so that it becomes common practice everywhere.
“Finally I welcome that the patient and the carer voice will be heard loud and clear in these reviews. Our commitment to delivering a health service where people are supported to make informed decisions about their own health will be judged on how well we listen to the needs and experiences of patients and their families.
“I see these reviews as key to encouraging health boards to ask deeper questions and spread best practice across the NHS.”
Dr Denise Coia, Chair of Healthcare Improvement Scotland said:
"We welcome today’s announcement as part of our work in supporting improvements in the care patients receive in Scotland. We will work with a wide range of stakeholders in developing the methodology for these more comprehensive reviews.
“These reviews will offer a further opportunity to demonstrate the contribution that appropriate and balanced scrutiny can make to improving the quality of healthcare in Scotland.”
Notes To Editors
The reviews will be entirely independent and will assess health boards against the commitments set out in the Healthcare Quality Strategy published in 2010.
The reviews will be conducted on a rolling basis for each health board, with the first review expected to take place in early 2015.
The detailed methodology of the reviews will be designed by a range of stakeholders including service users and will take account of the learning and experiences taken from the NHS Lanarkshire rapid review process.
In publishing the review reports, HIS will highlight the good practice and areas for improvement at every level of the NHS.