Quality & Risk Profiles

Quality and Risk Profiles (QRPs) are an essential tool for Healthcare Providers, Commissioners of healthcare services and for the Care Quality Commission – the body that oversees the safety and quality of healthcare services. QRPs are used by these groups of people and organisations to monitor a Healthcare Provider's compliance with the essential standards of quality and safety. Since October 2010, all providers of healthcare have been required to register themselves with the Care Quality Commission, and in doing so, have made a declaration that they are compliant with these essential standards.

There are 16 essential standards of quality and safety, and these standards are grouped into 5 key patient expectations;

1. Patients can expect to be involved and told what's happening at every stage of their care
2. Patients can expect care, treatment and support that meets their needs
3. Patients can expect to be safe
4. Patients can expect to be cared for by qualified staff
5. Patients can expect their care providers to consistently check the quality of its service

By reporting on how a provider is performing against these key patient expectations, the QRPs can be used to assess where risks in safety and quality lie.

Since September 2010, QRPs have been made available for Ambulance Trusts, Primary Care Trusts, Mental Health Trusts, Learning Disability Trusts, and Acute and Specialist Trusts; with the information contained within the risk profile updated on a monthly basis. The CQC are working to further develop QRPs for Social Care Providers and Independent Healthcare Providers.

Healthcare Providers are advised to use the information contained within their QRPs to support their internal monitoring of quality and to reassure themselves that the compliance against the essential standards they declared when they registered with the Care Quality Commission continues to be upheld.

It is suggested that commissioners of healthcare services should use the information contained in the QRPs to hold to account those Providers that they commission services from, and that they take QRPs into consideration when tendering for new service providers.

The Care Quality Commission will use QRPs to pinpoint areas of concern with the performance of Healthcare Providers, and use this information to guide which providers they visit to undertake an onsite assessment, and which element of patient safety and care quality is assessed.

How Words Worth Reading Ltd can help

At Words Worth Reading Ltd we have over 42 years of combined experience of working with Healthcare Providers and commissioners. This experience includes analytical expertise, innovative performance management, operational delivery and change management within acute, primary and independent healthcare environments. It also includes the provision of detailed and in-depth support to Healthcare Providers throughout their declaration registration with the Care Quality Commission against the essential standards. We pride ourselves on the scale, range and depth of our healthcare knowledge.

For Healthcare Providers we can take their QRPs and work with their internal management and operational teams to:

• Develop an understanding of what the QRP is saying
• Identify ways in which this information can be used to make the provider more attractive to commissioning bodies
• Identify areas of development and work with the internal teams to agree actions to address these weaknesses
• Build interactive tools that can support the improvement of weaker areas of quality or safety throughout the organisation
• Provide training programmes and/or presentations for staff who need to learn more about how they can proactively use QRPs to develop service delivery

For Healthcare Commissioners we can take the QRPs of their existing or future providers and work with their internal commissioning leads and support officers to:

• Develop an understanding of what each of the QRPs are saying
• Identify areas of weak performance that need to be challenged with providers
• Provider a framework for routine challenge
• Identify areas of strong performance that can help new providers stand out from the crowd
• Implement monitoring tools that enable ongoing and easy monitoring of provider performance
• Provide training programmes and/or presentations for staff who need to learn more about how they can proactively use QRPs to commission strongly performing service

For further information on how we can support you in the proactive use of QRPs, give us a call on 01206 266766 or contact us via email enquiries@wordsworthreading.co.uk. Alternatively, complete the contact form.