High quality care for all NHS Next Stage Review - Antibiotic Action

50 4: Quality at the heart of everything we do4information on key measures. Withthe help and support of frontlineclinicians, we have begun to identifycomparable measures that arecurrently used by different parts ofthe service today, and will bring themtogether into an integrated nationalset. These national metrics will bedeveloped through discussion withpatients, the public and staff. Wewill announce the first set of qualityindicators that will be used nationallyby December 2008. And althoughwe will begin with acute services,from next year, we will also developand pilot a quality framework forcommunity services.11. The national metrics will beimportant, but it will be critical thatlocal NHS organisations should signup to the concept of quality metricsand feel motivated to augment thenational indicators with their ownmeasurements of quality. Our aimis for NHS organisations to freelydevelop the measures that will besthelp them to review the quality ofthe services they offer regularly.12. Within organisations, we know thata defining characteristic of highperforming teams is their willingnessto measure their performanceand use the information to makecontinuous improvements. We wantall clinical teams to follow this bestpractice and so we will supportthem by working in partnership withthe professional bodies, specialistsocieties and universities to developa wider range of useful local metrics,than the national framework. We willalso develop ‘Clinical Dashboards’which will present selected nationaland locally developed measures in asimple graphical format as a tool toinform the daily decisions that drivequality improvement.13. Dashboards are being piloted byfrontline NHS staff in three locations:• In an East London A&Edepartment, the dashboardpresents information, updatedevery 15 minutes, about how soonpatients are seen, assessed andget results from tests, and aboutpatient satisfaction. The dashboardis used by staff and is displayedprominently in the patients’waiting area.• In Nottingham, a urology surgicalteam is using the dashboard topresent information on length ofstay, complications and averageoperation length.• In Bolton, a GP practice is workingwith the local A&E to collect anddisplay information on the numberof patients attending A&E and outof-hoursservices.14. Our goal is that every provider ofNHS services should systematicallymeasure, analyse and improvequality. They will need to developtheir own quality frameworks,combining relevant indicators definednationally, with those appropriate tolocal circumstances. This will includequality measures that reflect thevisions for improved services that areat the core of this Review.