IQA support for NHS improvement drive
PRESS RELEASE
The Institute of Quality Assurance (IQA), a not for profit organisation and the UK professional body for the advancement of quality practices, is calling on the Government to fundamentally review its attempts to monitor and improve service delivery by the NHS. Government targets divert doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals from identifying and reducing risk and waste at source. Perhaps NHS targets had a value but their time has now passed.
Frank Steer, Director General of the IQA said, 'A new approach should draw on quality improvement techniques used by world-class organisations. We know what works and what does not, it's not a mystery. The IQA can support and train healthcare professionals to gain insight into simple, practical ways of reducing waste and risk and giving patients more of what they want. We are all for measurement, so long as it provides timely, well targeted insight into how to improve, rather than simply evidence of failure'.
The late Dr W Edwards Deming, an American quality guru who led the post war regeneration of Japan, said, 'If management sets targets and makes people's jobs depend on them - they will meet the targets - even if they have to destroy the enterprise to do it'. Setting targets is too frequently an easy way for management to shift blame and blame seems to be a part of the culture of the organisation; and it is counter-productive.
Frank Steer announced that the IQA has begun its new round of initiatives to support NHS healthcare professionals with a training programme for reducing human error. It highlights how human error affects provision of healthcare and how its vulnerability can be assessed systematically and addressed effectively. Frank Steer added, 'We must not continue to see opportunities for improvement wasted and IQA is ready to play the part'.
Reducing human error in healthcare