Quality improvement made simple What everyone should know about health care quality improvement
August 2013

Key points
- This guide focuses on one important element of the quality agenda: quality improvement. It looks in particular at what are known as organisational or industrial approaches to quality improvement.
- These aim to bring about a measurable improvement by applying specific methods within a health care setting.
Improving quality is about making health care safe, effective, patient-centred, timely, efficient and equitable. In the history of the NHS, there has never been a greater focus on improving the quality of health services.
This is not a ‘how to’ guide. Instead, it offers a clear explanation of some common approaches used to improve quality, including where they have come from, their underlying principles and their efficacy and applicability within the healthcare arena.
It is written for a general health care audience and will be most useful for those new to the field of quality improvement, or those wanting to be reminded of the key points.
Updated in 2013, this is the second edition of Quality improvement made simple.
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