To encourage more innovative thinking and give health care professionals the opportunity to share their ideas, a competition has been launched to identify how health outcomes should be measured.
The way that the NHS measures success is changing. The modernised NHS will focus on the health outcomes that matter most to patients such as recovery from illness, patient experience and the overall management of long term conditions.
To help drive improvements, the NHS Outcomes Framework was developed through public consultation and contains 51 indicators.
The competition enables frontline staff, clinical teams and stakeholders to suggest how they think outcomes should be measured for two particular indicators:
- recovery from stroke
- children’s and young people’s experience of health care.
They were included in the Framework because they received strong support and we now need to develop meaningful indicators to measure them.
Four other areas received support during the consultation and the competition also asks for suggestions of good indicators to measure them.
They are:
- improving outcomes for people with learning disabilities, and particularly reducing premature death
- improving the functional ability of children with long term conditions
- enhancing the quality of life for children and young people with mental health illness
- enhancing the quality of life for people with dementia.
The NHS Outcomes Framework is updated annually and these areas are likely to feature in future versions.
Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley said: ‘The NHS has a long and proud track record of innovation that has driven major improvements in patient care.
‘The NHS is full of talented people with brilliant ideas. We need to foster a culture which supports innovation to improve quality and productivity. This is crucial for a modern NHS that puts patients first and achieves outcomes that are consistently among the best in the world.’
The competition closes on 1 June 2011.
>> See how to enter competition
>> Find out more about the NHS Outcomes Framework
>> See press release
