Qualitywatch

The NHS and social care system in England face persistent and interlocking pressures. Demand continues to rise, driven by an ageing population and increasing levels of chronic illness, while workforce shortages and tight financial settlements constrain the system’s response.

At the same time, major reforms and productivity drives are being pursued in a highly challenging environment. Performance against key standards, particularly waiting times across elective, emergency and cancer care, remain well below target, with high levels of variability across local areas.

Public confidence has recovered very slightly, but remains highly fragile. Concerns about access, quality and safety continue to attract close scrutiny. Robust monitoring of care quality is therefore essential – not only to understand performance, but to judge whether reforms pursued by the government are delivering real improvements for patients and service users.

While different national organisations and arm's length bodies monitor the quality of care, the Nuffield Trust believes there is an urgent need for more independent and impartial scrutiny by non-statutory bodies.

QualityWatch is a research programme supported by the Health Foundation monitoring how the quality of health and social care is changing over time. 

QualityWatch aims to:

• provide an authoritative resource on the overall quality of health and social care
• independently monitor and comment on changes over time
• highlight areas where improvement is possible 
• contribute to improving measures of quality.

Key elements of the programme include over 200 care quality indicators, updated throughout the year, a dynamically updated performance dashboard with monthly statistics on acute and elective care performance, and regular bespoke analysis and commentary summarising the state of healthcare and focusing in on more overlooked aspects of NHS quality.

Care quality indicators

Our 200+ indicators feature interactive charts designed to explore changes in the quality of health and social care over time. They are categorised by domain and sector to provide coverage of a wide range of services and aspects of quality. Sectors covered are:

• Primary and community care
• Hospital care
• Emergency care
• Mental health
• Learning disability
• Public health
• Social care
• Children and young people
• Integrated care
• International

Where possible, we consider regional variation within the UK and draw comparisons with other countries. We generally use existing sources of data, drawing on a wide range of sources, to get a rounded picture of quality.

Our focus is on monitoring change in recent years, setting our analysis within the context of longer-term changes over the last decade where possible. 

Have your say

If you are interested in supporting QualityWatch directly, read our 'Support us' page.

We welcome comments on the programme, suggestions for areas of interest and are always interested in working with experts in their areas. If your thoughts relate specifically to QualityWatch's indicators, you can use the Disqus comments function at the bottom of the relevant page. These comments are moderated and will be visible to all users of the site. 

If you have more general thoughts, questions or comments about QualityWatch, you can get in touch via email.

Individual cases

We aim to provide an overview of the health and social care system and are not in a position to comment or respond to individual cases. The Care Quality Commission provides useful information on what to do if you have a complaint or concern about a care service or provider.