General Healthcare Group (GHG) works within a robust
clinical governance framework to provide an environment
in which our hospitals can continually improve the quality
of care. Our strategy incorporates the use and review of a
number of measures, including evidence-based clinical
quality information, compliance with and achievement
of national standards and quality assurance processes,
the continued effective development of our staff, and a
methodology to monitor and respond to feedback and
complaints from our patients, employees, clinicians, local
communities and other stakeholders.
Standard setting
Health regulation
General Healthcare Group (GHG) works within a robust
clinical governance framework to provide an environment
in which our hospitals can continually improve the quality
of care. Our strategy incorporates the use and review of a
number of measures, including evidence-based clinical
quality information, compliance with and achievement
of national standards and quality assurance processes,
the continued effective development of our staff, and a
methodology to monitor and respond to feedback and
complaints from our patients, employees, clinicians, local
communities and other stakeholders.
The principal regulators for the BMI hospitals in England
is the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the Scottish Care
Commission for our three hospitals in Scotland, and the
Health Inspectorate for Wales for our one hospital in Wales.
The CQC assumed the role of the Healthcare Commission
and the Commission for Social Care Inspection from
1 April 2009. Refer to the Healthcare sector and regulatory
overview on pages 58 and 59 for further details.
GHG published its first set of Quality Accounts during
the year. These will become mandatory from April 2010,
following Lord Darzi’s NHS Next Stage Review that requires
all healthcare providers working on behalf of the NHS
to publish Quality Accounts. GHG’s first set summarise
activities and successes against three quality domains –
safety, effectiveness and patient experience.
The frequency of inspections at our hospitals has decreased
year-on-year owing to the risk-based model adopted by the
CQC. Their regulations require that six-monthly provider
visits are carried out by the CQC across all our hospitals.
These visits assess progress for actions required from
previous CQC inspections and provider visits, compliance
with National Minimum Standards and corporate policy,
and best practice principles. Reports and action plans are
generated, and copies are submitted to the CQC and the
GHG Clinical Governance Board for review.
As inspections are risk based, attention is paid to standards
that the CQC have assessed as potentially non-compliant
from the hospitals’ annual self-assessment submission, with
the result that fewer standards are assessed at each visit.
This focused approach has lead to a marginal increase in
the number of assessed core standards not fully met.
National guidelines
Published national guidelines are assessed for applicability
and, when relevant, are communicated to our hospitals for
implementation through well-established structures.
Evidence-based practice
Significant progress has been made in reviewing corporate policies and in managing them to ensure that they are based on the best available evidence, consistent in format and current, and can be easily adapted for implementation at local hospital level. All corporate policies are published on the corporate intranet for easy access for all staff.
Core standards assessed but not fully achieved
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