The Quality Improvement Team was established in early 2022 and began with the successful implementation of the care coordinator role in practices. The primary focus of the quality improvement team has been to support practices and services to prepare for CQC inspections and to develop monitoring of quality improvement plans.
The team have worked to streamline functions across the practices and services where possible to help support teams and identify areas for improved efficiencies.

Working with local and national teams we have used platforms to analyse data available to improve patient safety,
data quality and maximise contractual achievements for the practices. These platforms have allowed the PCN and practices to monitor their own performance closely and have encouraged investigation of patient records to increase the accuracy and consistency of record keeping. The areas we have focused on have included QOF, IIF, CQC and DES requirements.

Supporting practices with quality improvement plans in their post inspection phase has been the team’s biggest development area in the first few months. This work has allowed for a better understanding of how the individual practices work and has enabled good integration with the local teams.

The aim in future will be to progress into more proactive work to support with readiness for planned inspection programmes. This will be done by using trends identified from inspections locally and nationally plus examples of best practice, the Quality Improvement team will strive to help practices and services evidence that they are Safe, Well-Led, Caring, Responsive & Effective.