Aims & Strategy

Aims & strategy

The Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) was established to promote quality in health and social care services in the UK, and in particular to increase the impact of clinical audit. It is led by a consortium of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, the Royal College of Nursing and National Voices.

HQIP is contracted by the Department of Health in England to deliver outcome focused quality improvement programmes structured around collection of clinical data, including clinical audits, registers and confidential enquiries. We also work under contract related to national clinical audit and confidential enquiries in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Ireland. We work to promote and develop other areas of quality improvement in health and social care in addition to these contracts.

Our work focuses on the following key strategic areas:

• Managing and improving the national clinical audit programme  in England and Wales
• Improving quality improvement expertise through training and resources
• Building clinical audit and related programmes into commissioning, regulation and revalidation processes
• Helping quality improvement staff obtain professional status
• Helping shape and form policy around quality improvement.

In 2011 HQIP extended our work to promote quality improvement within social care.

Annual Review:

HQIP Annual Review 2010-11 >>

Quarterly updates: (start Q2, 2011-12)

Q3 2011-12: Report on the activity of HQIP >>

Q2 2011-12: Report on the activity of HQIP >>

Clinical Audit: Our 2008-11 strategic plan set out in detail the vision of how HQIP would discharge the first three years of our contract in relation to clinical audit, breaking the activities into groups of functions around key themes.

View the clinical audit strategic plan here >>

View the 2011-12 business plan here >

The following model and text sets out the key elements of what HQIP does:

Core business: Promoting QI (and related clinical governance) of health and social care through data led processes - audit, confidential enquiries etc. This is expressed through:

• Commissioning national, regional and local programmes of this type, and activity listed below
• Involving patients/consumers in QI - getting them involved in process and management, and as users of QI results
• Encouraging wide use, through wide access to results, of such processes for various purposes - including accreditation, commissioning, patient choice, clinician revalidation and accountability, research etc
• Promoting or running good governance of clinical effectiveness and QI - within providers, and at national policy level (through accreditation of providers/learning etc)
• Promoting learning in QI (audit and broader QI and clinical governance)
• Helping clinicians improve their practice - learning, as above; networking; promoting QI as a professional discipline, helping assess the effectiveness of clinicians (supervision, appraisal, revalidation etc); organising professional associations for groups of professionals; providing tools and systems for helping professionals in difficulty to improve; supporting professional organisations

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