Healthcare Quality Strategy for Scotland

In 2009 the Scottish Government Health Department (SGHD) consulted on a draft healthcare quality strategy which aims to provide a renewed focus on creating high quality person-centred, clinically effective and safe healthcare services for Scotland. The proposals centre on building a national quality infrastructure and adopting a systematic approach to measuring and improving quality. SGHD have issued a Q&A Document summarising the key features of the strategy. There are also full details on the SGHD website.

In responding to the consultation in December 2009, RCPE emphasised the importance of developing clinical standards (with appropriate professional input) to support robust audit and outcomes data.  The College also highlighted the need to establish a well resourced audit infrastructure across Scotland to allow clinical teams to undertake clinical effectiveness work in support of local quality improvement projects.  The full RCPE response can be read here.

The Royal Colleges in Scotland will be invited to join the new Quality Alliance proposed under the strategy and RCPE will use its membership to influence and support development of a national infrastructure for clinical effectiveness, including audit.  However, it will be important also to ensure that local quality standards and initiatives reflect professional clinical standards and priorities.  Fellows and Members in Scotland are encouraged to contact their local Quality Champions (click here for a list) to emphasise and support this approach. Whilst this will be of ongoing importance, there is a key opportunity during April 2010  to influence initial developments.  This is because Health Boards have been tasked with a number of specific actions prior to the formal launch of the Healthcare Quality Strategy at the end of April – these are as follows:

• A Board-wide engagement programme to ensure that the key messages about the Quality Strategy are shared widely and all staff have the opportunity to contribute their ideas.

• Obtain commitments to new individual and Board level changes that reflect our quality ambition and identify a small varied selection of 10-20 examples of these commitments that you would like to share nationally as progress is made over the year/s ahead.

• Identify and share existing exemplars of high quality healthcare or quality improvement approaches within your own Board.

• Identify key measures of quality currently used locally or which are under development and which Boards consider are appropriate to support and report on quality improvement.

Fellows and Members may wish to refer to these strands of activity when approaching their Quality Champions.

The College would welcome feedback on implementation of the strategy locally to inform its discussions at national level.