Quality of care

High-quality care can usually be defined in three parts: clinical effectiveness, safety and patient experience. We will be examining how NHS and social care organisations in England are improving quality and assessing their progress.

Overview

Related projects

Patient and Family-centred Care

Breaking new ground in improving the experience of hospital care for patients and their families, and the working lives of staff.

Patient experience

Patient experience means putting the patient and their experience at the heart of quality improvement. As well as our policy work on this vital measure of quality, we run a number of programmes that aim to improve patient experience in care environments.

See more related projects

The Francis Inquiry report

Anticipating the Francis Inquiry report

We analyse what the forthcoming recommendations might mean for the NHS, and what needs to change in the health system to protect patients.

Improving the quality of care for frail older people

Joanna Goodrich looks at the changes that can be made at all levels to significantly improve older people’s experience of care.

Reading Room & briefings

Want to know more?

For more resources on quality of care, including reading lists, database searches and useful web pages, visit our Reading Room.

Related briefings

See our briefings and responses on quality of care issues.

Featured publications

Developing supportive design for people with dementia The King’s Fund’s Enhancing the Healing Environment Programme 2009-2012

9 Jan 2013

Sarah Waller CBE

Abigail Masterson, Hedley Finn

Health policy under the coalition government A mid-term assessment

28 Nov 2012

Sarah Gregory, Anna Dixon, Chris Ham

See more related publications

Blogs on quality of care

A matter of meaning

14 May 2013

Liz Saunders

Can we keep up with the demand for urgent and emergency care?

24 Apr 2013

Nigel Edwards

See more related blog posts

Relevant events

8 May 2013

Integrated care summit 2013

Venue:

The King's Fund

6 Nov 2013

Transforming patient experience Sixth annual conference

Venue:

The King's Fund, London, UK

See more related events

Relevant audio/video

Chris Naylor: volunteering in health and care

Michael West: developing cultures of high-quality care

Michael West

See more related audio/video

Useful articles

Are 'family and friends tests' useful: agree, disagree, neither, don’t know?

14 May 2013

Volunteers are a big local asset

14 Mar 2013

Richard Humphries

See more on this topic

Relevant press releases

Public satisfaction with the NHS stabilises after record fall

3 Apr 2013

The King's Fund's statement on the government's response to the Francis Inquiry report

26 Mar 2013

See more related press releases

Our work on this topic

Multimedia: Slideshow

Improving out-of-hours maternity services: Stockport NHS Foundation Trust

20 Apr 2011

Publication

How is the NHS performing? April 2011

20 Apr 2011

John Appleby , Emmi Poteliakhoff

Multimedia: Video

Edwin Chandraharan: postpartum haemorrhage and its management

20 Apr 2011

Edwin Chandraharan

Project

GSK IMPACT Awards

17 Apr 2011

Multimedia: Slideshow

John Appleby: Variations in health care

14 Apr 2011

John Appleby

Press release

Widespread variations in rates of surgery are unfair and inefficient, new study finds

14 Apr 2011

Publication

Variations in health care

14 Apr 2011

John Appleby, Veena Raleigh, Francesca Frosini , Gwyn Bevan, Haiyan Gao, Tom Lyscom

Press release

Re-think needed on health and social care outcomes, says The King's Fund

31 Mar 2011

Multimedia: Video

Jeremy Taylor: Inquiry into the Quality of General Practice

24 Mar 2011

Jeremy Taylor

Publication

Improving the quality of care in general practice

24 Mar 2011

Pages