Quality Hub
The NHS Scotland, (NHSS) Quality Strategy builds on existing policy and strategy documents such as Better Health Better Care and Leading Better Care and was endorsed by the Scottish Parliament in May 2010. The Quality Strategy challenges NHS Boards to coordinate and pool resources in order to meet its aspiration of improving the quality of healthcare in Scotland. In response to this, "The Hub" is being delivered by a national collaboration between Healthcare Improvement Scotland, NHS Education for Scotland (NES), NHS National Services Scotland's Information Services Division (ISD), the Scottish Government Quality and Efficiency Support Team (QuEST) and NHS Health Scotland.
The collaboration manage their contribution through four key work-streams:
- Implementation support that is flexible and responsive;
- Education and learning opportunities that are accessible and relevant;
- Measurement for quality improvement that is meaningful; and
- Facilitation of quality improvement networks for NHS staff.
Development of the Hub is seen as a three-year programme of work, with Healthcare Improvement Scotland acting as the lead organisation.
Quality Improvement National Reporting Tool
Information Services Division (ISD) as part of the HUB collaboration is tasked with developing and maintaining a national reporting tool that will support the measurement and monitoring of progress of a range of Quality Improvement Indicators and Outcomes. The reporting tool will be an integral part of the HUB and will initially provide support to the Scottish Patient Safety Programme and the Leading Better Care - Clinical Quality Indicators Programme. The system will replace some of the functionality currently available within the Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Extranet but the key functions will be to extract data electronically direct from local Health Board Quality Improvement Systems and to provide Health Boards and other key stakeholders with a series of predefined standard reports.
Quality Measures Framework
ISD are committed, through the Quality Strategy, to simplify and streamline the range of measurement which exists across NHS Scotland (NHSS) to ensure that maximum value is achieved out of the investment in data collection and measurement. ISD are currently helping to develop the Quality Measures Framework to support the definition of healthcare quality described by the 3 healthcare quality ambitions (Person-centred, Safe and Effective). These ambitions will be tracked by a small number of high-level measures combining patient and staff reported experiences and outcomes as well as clinical outcomes and measures of patient safety.
The twelve potential high level measures are currently being developed. ISD has agreed to gather and analyse information in respect of these measures and report on them on a quarterly basis. While some measures utilise data from established sources, three potential measures require new data collections (i.e. Patient Reported Outcomes Measures, Early Years measure) or projects to initiate new data submissions to ISD (Adverse Events).
