About Advancing Quality


Advancing Quality aims to give patients a better experience of the NHS by making sure the highest standards of care are delivered in every hospital in the North West of England. The idea is, if every hospital achieves the Advancing Quality measures, it will help to:

  • Save lives
  • Reduce re-admissions into hospital
  • Reduce complications 
  • Decrease the length of time patients have to spend in hospital.

In turn, this will enable the hospitals to reduce costs and the money saved can be used to improve care and facilities. 

 

Launched in October 2008 in all North West hospitals, Advancing Quality originally focused on five clinical areas which affect a lot of patients in the North West. These were heart attacks, heart bypass surgery, heart failure, hip and knee replacement surgery and pneumonia.

 

Following the early success of the programme, Advancing Quality expanded into the treatment of stroke patients in October 2010, followed by dementia and first episode psychosis in January 2011.  

 

Advancing Quality is the flagship programme of AQuA (Advancing Quality Alliance), the North West's health care quality improvement body. Find out more about AQuA.

 

How does it work in practice?

Although the care you receive when you are in hospital is tailored to your own individual needs, clinicians from across the North West have agreed a number of key things should happen which, if carried out at the same time and in the same way for every patient, will ensure all patients are receiving the best possible care. These are what Advancing Quality refers to as the Clinical Process Measures and trusts aim to achieve 100 per cent success rate.

For example, if you are admitted to hospital suffering from pneumonia, two of the key Clinical Process Measures would be to have your oxygen levels assessed when you arrive in hospital and, if you are prescribed antibiotics, receive these within six hours of arriving at hospital.

To determine how well an NHS trust is performing, Advancing Quality looks at three areas:

  • Clinical Process and Outcomes Measures – measuring that the best clinical processes are delivered at the same time, in the same way, for every patient. Read the full list of measures.

  • Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) – measuring a patient's personal view of improvement in their quality of life following treatment or surgery.

  • Patient Experience Measures (PEMs) – measuring a patient’s personal view of their own experience in hospital and of the care they received. 

This website currently provides information about how trusts are performing against the clinical process and outcomes measures for the five original clinical areas. Results for stroke, dementia and first episode psychosis will be available later in the year when the results are published. All data is assured independently by the Audit Commission, prior to publication.


The idea behind Advancing Quality

Advancing Quality builds on the experience and knowledge gained through the Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration (HQID) programme launched in 2003 in the USA.  HQID was proven to save lives in participating hospitals.  It is now operating in more than 250 hospitals in the non-profit healthcare sector in the US. 


Will it be evaluated?

The Advancing Quality programme will be independently evaluated by the University of Manchester Business School over a five year period.  The evaluation will determine if AQ has impacted on financial savings, lives saved, reduced length of stay in hospital, reduced complications and reduced admissions and the findings will be published in due course.