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

Article

Data briefing: Waiting times are just so...1950s

10 Apr 2008

John Appleby , Ruth Thorlby

Article

Patient choice in general practice: the implications of patient satisfaction surveys

2 Apr 2008

Anna Dixon, Julian Le Grand , Ruth Robertson

Press release

Patient choice has some way to go before it delivers improvements in hospital quality, says The King's Fund

27 Mar 2008

Publication

Regulating Complementary Medical Practitioners

12 Mar 2008

Anna Dixon

Press release

Majority of births in England are safe but lack of systematic approach to safety creates risks, independent inquiry concludes

29 Feb 2008

Publication

Safe Births: Everybody's business

29 Feb 2008

Onora O'Neill

Article

Darzi review must avoid national blueprint to enable best local solutions

28 Feb 2008

Niall Dickson

Multimedia: Video

Professor Onora O'Neill on the main findings from our 2008 maternity inquiry

27 Feb 2008

Onora O'Neill

Press release

CSCI report shows glaring inconsistencies in care and support for vulnerable adults that must be addressed

29 Jan 2008

Multimedia: Video

Richard Horton on medical professionalism

25 Jan 2008

Richard Horton

Pages