Centre for Patient Safety and Service Quality (CPSSQ)
The Dr Foster Unit receives funding from the Centre for Patient Safety and Service Quality and has two full time members of staff working within the Unit.
Their remit is to help clinicians and managers in the NHS use information to drive quality and safety. The Centre for Patient Safety and Service Quality at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust is funded by the National Institute of Health Research.
A database of safety-related literature has been compiled as part of the research and is available for access.
Safety monitoring
Numerous measurement methods for adverse events are available. Data collected during patient care but usually for non-clinical purposes, such as reimbursement, are called routinely collected or administrative data. These data are frequently used in patient safety research but there has been relatively little evaluation of their applications. One of the secondary uses of these data has been in the implementation of patient safety screens. These flags for potential or actual adverse events arising from healthcare contact are often referred to as Patient Safety Indicators (PSIs), retaining the name of the original PSI set developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Service Quality (AHRQ) in the United States. There is increasing patient safety indicator development in different countries. For example, at the Dr Foster Unit at Imperial College we are continuing to adapt PSIs for use in the English healthcare system.
Recent examples of work include:
- A review of the evidence on patient safety indicator development and application in secondary care PSI report.CT
- Literature review on the use of routinely collected data for detecting and monitoring adverse events in primary care
- Analysis of adverse events recorded in a primary care computer system in London, the Clinical Information Management Sharing (CIMS) project at Brent Primary Care Trust
- Development of a set of patient safety indicators for primary care
- Evaluate the impact of current information and surveillance systems on patient outcomes
Quality and performance
Quality performance data have long been used as a method for monitoring and comparing performance of healthcare providers. The current challenge is to ensure these data are used not only for comparison and accountability but also for the improvement of care (Thomson & Lally, 2000). In the light of recent severe failings in quality assurance as in the case of Mid Staffordshire Hospital, this topic is of renewed relevance for the NHS and the management of health services. To encourage the use of performance data for quality assurance purposes, it is important to address questions about the role of performance data in quality improvement, which types of data are useful to healthcare providers, what types of data are currently used, and what the barriers and drivers are in terms of organisational context and data presentation.
Recent examples of work include:
- A review of the empirical evidence on the impact of performance data on the quality of care outcomes and health care provider behaviour.
- A qualitative audit at Imperial College NHS Healthcare Trust examining the barriers and drivers to using performance data for quality assurance purposes
- Recommendations for the provision of performance data to health care providers
