Impact of published clinical outcomes data: case study in NHS hospital trusts

Objective To examine the impact of the publication of clinical outcomes data on NHS Trusts in Scotland to inform the development of similar schemes elsewhere. Design Case studies including semistructured interviews and a review of background statistics. Setting Eight Scottish NHS acute trusts. Participants 48 trust staff comprising chief executives, medical directors, stroke consultants, breast cancer consultants, nurse managers, and junior doctors. Main outcome measures Staff views on the benefits and drawbacks of clinical outcome indicators provided by the clinical resource and audit group (CRAG) and perceptions of the impact of these data on clinical practice and continuous improvement of quality. Results The CRAG indicators had a low profile in the trusts and were rarely cited as informing internal quality improvement or used externally to identify best practice. The indicators were mainly used to support applications for further funding and service development. The poor effect was attributable to a lack of professional belief in the indicators, arising from perceived problems around quality of data and time lag between collection and presentation of data; limited dissemination; weak incentives to take action; a predilection for process rather than outcome indicators; and a belief that informal information is often more useful than quantitative data in the assessment of clinical performance. Conclusions Those responsible for developing clinical indicator programmes should develop robust datasets. They should also encourage a working environment and incentives such that these data are used to improve continuously

Payment by results and demand management: learning from the South Yorkshire laboratory

The need for effective demand management has become more transparent following the introduction of Payment by Results, Patient Choice and other reforms. This report details the findings of an empirical study exploring the South Yorkshire experience of demand management. By being ahead of the game in introducing PbR for all activity in all its acute trusts in the South Yorkshire area, the experience in South Yorkshire has the potential to inform the national roll-out of Payment by Results and Choose and Book. Specific objectives included: • assessing local perceptions of the nature and scale of changes in demand and whether this will be affected as other reforms, specifically Patient Choice, are implemented; • identifying what strategies are being developed locally to manage demand effectively; • documenting any benefits and drawbacks of different strategies for patients, PCTs, providers and the wider health economy; • identifying any facilitators and barriers to developing effective approaches for managing demand; • eliciting opinions on how current demand management strategies could be improved or adapted

Organisational culture and quality of health care

concerned with assessing and improving the quality of health care. The USA, in particular, has identified specific concerns over quality issues1 2 and a recent report from the Institute of Medicine pointed to the considerable toll of medical errors.3 In the UK a series of scandals has propelled quality issues to centre stage4 5 and made quality improvement a key policy area.6 But how are quality improvements to be wrought in such a complex system as health care? A recent issue of Quality in Health Care was devoted to considerations of organisational change in health care, calling it “the key to quality improvement”.7 In discussing how such change can be managed, the authors of one of the articles asserted that cultural change needs to be wrought alongside structural reorganisation and systems reform to bring about “a culture in which excellence can flourish”.8 A review of policy changes in the UK over the past two decades shows that these appeals for cultural change are not new but have appeared in various guises (box 1). However, talk of “culture” and “culture change” beg some diffi- cult questions about the nature of the underlying substrate to which change programmes are applied. What is “organisational culture” anyway? It is to this issue that this paper is addressed