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

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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: Video

Andy Burnham: future plans for the NHS: highlights

17 Sep 2009

Andy Burnham

Press release

Maternity units to be part of major new initiative to support safe services for mothers and babies

10 Sep 2009

Blog

Quality at a lower cost: making it happen

1 Sep 2009

Mark Jennings

Press release

Maternity staff working hard to improve safety but barriers remain, according to new report

25 Aug 2009

Project

Safer Births project

24 Aug 2009

Article

A patient's journey: Mesothelioma

14 Aug 2009

Jocelyn Cornwell , Kieran Sweeney, Liz Toy

Publication

Assessing complementary practice

10 Aug 2009

Professor Dame Carol Black

Press release

New research methods needed to build evidence base on effectiveness of popular complementary therapies

10 Aug 2009

Publication

Measures of patients' experience in hospital

3 Aug 2009

Angela Coulter, Jocelyn Cornwell , Ray Fitzpatrick

Article

Exploring how to measure patients' experience of care in hospital to improve services

27 Jul 2009

Jocelyn Cornwell, Joanna Goodrich

Pages