News

Service quality improves over ten years By Nick Lipley HEALTH CARE in England has improved in many key areas over the past decade, according to the findings of a new research programme, QualityWatch. But some issues, including urgent care and the prevention of emergency admissions, should cause concern, say the Nuffield Trust and healthcare improvement charity the Health Foundation. In their first joint annual assessment of the quality of care last month, they also highlight concern about continuing health inequalities, whereby people in deprived areas of the country continue to fare worse on a range of indicators. The QualityWatch project seeks to assess whether the quality of government-funded health and social care services is likely to improve or worsen in the next five years. The assessment draws on an analysis of care in almost 150 services across primary, community, hospital care, mental health and social care, which were evaluated on six domains: access, safety, effectiveness, person-centred care and experience, capacity, and equity. The findings will be updated regularly as part of the five-year programme.

New project gauges care standards against shrinking resources, as part of an ongoing programme The assessment also incorporates findings from two in-depth reports: one on emergency admissions for people requiring ambulatory care, the other on treatment for people with hip fracture. Together, they suggest that urgent and preventive care require immediate attention. Key concern Nuffield Trust chief executive Andy McKeon said: ‘Given constraints in resources for the NHS and social care in the next decade, a key concern must be the extent to which the gains made in improving quality over the past decade may be lost. ‘But, despite recent high-profile failures and fears of deteriorating care standards, our research suggests that the constrained funding levels have so far not had a major effect on the overall quality of care.’ Health Foundation chief executive Jennifer Dixon added: ‘The good news is that on most indicators examined, quality appears to be at least maintained.

‘But urgent care stands out as an area to watch, in particular the quality of care outside hospitals and timely access to it by the public. This should be a high priority for action and a test of intelligent policymaking.’ RCN general secretary Peter Carter said: ‘The focus on preventable hospital admissions paints a familiar but worrying picture of patients being needlessly admitted to hospitals with conditions that could have been treated or prevented with better community care. ‘This is bad for the health service but, more importantly, bad for the patients who could be better treated closer to home. This is an in-depth report that provides further evidence that before resources are removed from hospitals there must be investment in community services to take up the slack.’

i Find out more Quality of Care in England Getting Better? QualityWatch Annual Statement 2013, tinyurl.com/qw-annual-st

MEMBERS OF the House of Commons health committee joined MPs and peers to sign up to a campaign on safe staffing levels at a high-profile event held by senior nurses last month. The Safe Staffing Alliance, comprising expert nurses brought together by our sister publication Nursing Standard, encouraged MPs to back the campaign’s message that care is unsafe on wards with more than eight patients to one nurse. Health committee member and campaign supporter Andrew George was among those attending the event at the House of Commons. The Liberal Democrat MP said: ‘An organisation can have the most sophisticated culture and leadership but, if they NURSING MANAGEMENT

Nathan Clarke

Parliamentarians back campaign to promote safe ward staff levels have not got enough nurses on the front line, those count for nothing.’ The 1:8 figure is based on evidence published by the National Nursing Research Unit at King’s College London and the University of Southampton, which found that breaches of this standard occur in 43 per cent of medical and surgical wards in England. Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust began displaying its daily staffing levels on boards in wards in May. Trust executive nursing director and alliance member Elaine Inglesby-Burke (pictured) said: ‘It shows both staff and patients that managers are paying attention to staffing levels.’ See analysis, page 8

November 2013 | Volume 20 | Number 7 Nursing Management 2013.20:7-7. Downloaded from journals.rcni.com by FLINDERS UNIVERSITY on 12/10/15. For personal use only.

7

Service quality improves over ten years.

Service quality improves over ten years. - PDF Download Free
214KB Sizes 0 Downloads 0 Views