The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is creating a huge impact on people’s lives and on health and social care services worldwide, the full extent of which will remain unknown for some time to come.
Like many organisations, the Nuffield Trust and the Health Foundation want to support national and global efforts to respond to the pandemic in the most useful ways we can.
QualityWatch will continue to provide independent scrutiny and analysis of the UK health and social care system, as far as possible, even during these unprecedented times. We hope our work will continue to both augment and inform the work of other statutory national bodies and initiatives.
In the coming weeks and months we will continue to publish regular outputs, many of which draw on data and sources tracking activity before the onset of the pandemic. We will do this in as sensitive a way as possible, while drawing readers’ attention to the data collection period for clarity.
Other QualityWatch outputs are more responsive and use the most current national data sources available in order to carry out our analysis, such as NHS England’s monthly combined performance summary. We acknowledge that, under such pressure and uncertainty, approaches to national data reporting may need to change.
We will continue our sense-making and monitoring work with all of the above in mind.
Please note that QualityWatch is not monitoring coronavirus (COVID-19) cases or deaths. Visit the UK government website for a dashboard of information on this subject.
The UK government also has the latest guidance and answers to frequently asked questions on how the coronavirus affects you available here.