The Darzi report High Quality Care for All signalled a shift to better quality care being the main theme of NHS reforms in England. Consequently, quality will become an issue that will be at the centre of most systems of governance in the NHS.
According to Jon Sussex and Adrian Towse, writing in the Health Service Journal, 14 August 2008, “…the purpose of the NHS is to improve the health of the population. So the most important measures of quality are measures of the outcomes of care. The best assessment of that will usually be provided by the patient. The simple notion that people can express the extent to which care leaves them feeling better or worse is the essence of measuring patient outcomes.”
Sussex and Towse say that “Data on patient outcomes is needed to provide vitally needed answers to four types of questions:
1. NHS staff who deliver healthcare and commissioners need information on outcomes to help them benchmark and improve the effectiveness of what they do;
2. patients need information on outcomes to be available to enable them - should they so wish - to compare different providers;
3. commissioners need information on performance and productivity, to decide how to get the greatest benefit from the resources at their disposal and how to allocate resources between different patient groups and types of care;
4. the government needs to know how productive the NHS is: how much health benefit the NHS is producing for the funds it receives. Currently, productivity is measured in terms of the amount of activity in the NHS - the numbers of patients seen and treated - but there is no reference to how successful the activity is in improving patient health.”
Sussex and Towse are principal authors of the Report of the Health Economics Commission on NHS outcomes, Performance and Productivity, which can be downloaded here.
Source: Healthcare Governance Review