Dear Colleagues
Apols for inevitable cross posting.
A new body - NHS Quality Improvement Scotland comes into being on January 1. This body replaces five exisiting standards institutions the Clinical Standards Board for Scotland, Health Technology Board for Scotland, the Scottish Health Advisory Service and Nursing and Midwifery Practice Development Unit and the Clinical Resource and Audit Group of the Scottish Executive Health Department.
Press Release from Scottish Executive below
Best wishes for the New Year
David McDaid
LSE Health and Social Care
New clinical effectiveness body established
Press Release SEhd285/2002
Available also at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/pages/news/2002/12/SEhd285.aspx
The nation's new clinical effectiveness organisation - NHS Quality Improvement Scotland - will be charged with leading the way on improving healthcare and health services when it officially comes into being on Wednesday (January 1, 2003).
The creation of NHS Quality Improvement, whose membership was announced on Christmas Eve, follows a commitment by the Scottish Executive to review Scotland's previous five clinical effectiveness organisations - the Clinical Standards Board for Scotland, Health Technology Board for Scotland, the Scottish Health Advisory Service and Nursing and Midwifery Practice Development Unit and the Clinical Resource and Audit Group of the Scottish Executive Health Department - and a public consultation on replacing them with a new single body.
Health Minister Malcolm Chisholm today welcomed the creation of the new organisation, which will have greater powers to inspect and enforce any necessary improvements on NHS Boards and Trusts.
"The creation of NHS Quality Improvement provides an excellent opportunity to build on and strengthen the work which has been undertaken by the individual clinical effectiveness organisations to improve healthcare and health services throughout Scotland.
"Like the individual bodies, the new Board will ensure that services are delivered to nationally agreed standards, standards which are developed in consultation with clinicians, patients and members of the public, to ensure that wherever services are delivered patients and their families know what type of treatment and care to expect, and have the assurance that local NHS Boards and Trusts are being stringently monitored.
"We are removing unnecessary and duplication of effort to ensure there are no distractions from the task of improving the quality of healthcare to patients in Scotland. NHS Quality Improvement will create independent mechanisms for assuring and supporting improvement in the quality of healthcare. It will also lead the drive to continuously improve the quality of local health services, supporting our work to develop a patient-focused service and establish a culture of openness and honesty where patients and staff work together in partnership.
"The new organisation will be fully independent, and able to respond to the concerns of patients and the public. I will expect it to lead the drive to improve services, identify problems where they occur and find practical solutions. A key difference is that NHS Quality Improvement will at my request, or by its own decision also conduct investigations and publish an independent report where a serious service failure has been identified or is suspected.
"The establishment of NHS Quality Improvement not only reaffirms our commitment to ensuring that local services deliver the highest possible quality of care to the people they serve it also signals a new era in clinical effectiveness in Scotland."
The consultation on the creation of a new, integrated clinical effectiveness body for Scotland began on March 1 this year. Following on a commitment in the Scottish Health Plan to review the work of the separate bodies, the consultation aimed to enable these organisations to work together to support improvements in the quality of local patient care.
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