Quality Improvement
Read our latest reports
What is Quality Improvement (QI)?
Quality improvement is about trying to make the health care you receive more:
- Safe – trying to ensure the care you receive makes you better, not worse
- Timely – ensuring you receive the care and information you need, when you need it
- Effective – ensuring the treatments and advice you’re receiving are evidence-based and work
- Efficient – helping your centre understand and use their resources to ensure optimal care
- People-centred – ensuring your opinions on your care are listened to and acted upon
- Equitable – reducing unnecessary differences in how care is provided across the UK
What does the Trust’s Quality Improvement team do?
The QI team has been working hard since 2018 to help CF centres across the UK to explore and improve the quality of care they provide.
The team work directly with CF centres to support the collection and analysis of patient experience and staffing data. Participating centres then receive bespoke data summaries from the team, detailing their local findings. These summaries allow services to explore existing good practice and to identify areas for targeted quality improvement.
The QI team also produce UK-wide reports from this information, which we send to services and publish on our website.
In addition, we support services to share about QI projects and experiences, so they can get feedback from peers and learn from each other.
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Our Patient Experience surveys
Our patient-reported experience measure surveys (PREMs) give CF centres insights into what people with CF and their families think about the health care they receive.
Repeating the PREMs surveys will track how experiences of people with CF change over time and will help CF teams measure the impact of their quality improvement efforts.
You can find out more about the data collection arrangements for these surveys here.
We thank all CF centres who support our PREMs surveys, and all people with CF and family members who shared their experiences. We welcome questions and feedback about PREMs reports at QI@cysticfibrosis.org.uk
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Paediatric services survey
We collect data on patient experiences in paediatric services every 3 years. The first survey in children’s services took place in 2019/20. The second survey took place in 2022/23 with 28 of 32 paediatric CF centres contributing and over 800 survey responses collected.
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Adult services survey
We collect data on patient experiences in adult services every 3 years. The first survey in adult services took place between 1 December 2020 and 31 March 2021, and 26 of 28 adult CF centres took part.
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Our staffing tool
This online tool, completed by centres themselves, gives us a yearly snapshot of staffing resources available in participating UK CF centres. Centres receive a tailored report showing how their staffing and vacancy levels compare to UK averages.
The QI team also publish summaries of the UK-wide findings from the staffing tool, which allow us to explore how staffing levels change over time.
Download the 2020-22 Staffing Report
Download the 2019-21 Staffing Report
Download the first Staffing Report – 2019 only
We thank all CF centres that submit information to our staffing tool, and we welcome questions and feedback about staffing reports at QI@cysticfibrosis.org.uk.
We know many CF services try to find solutions to reduce the impact of staffing and other challenges. We invite services to share their innovations and experiences in the form of case studies, so that they might help and inspire others.
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QI Share & Learn
The Trust’s QI team appreciate that improvement work often happens at local levels and we want to create opportunities for learning to be shared.
We host free lunchtime webinars, bringing together CF professionals and other stakeholders to share their experiences of innovation in CF care, explore challenges, and learn from each other.
Find out more and sign up for future QI Share & Learn events
Upcoming events
- November 2023: QI Share & Learn on parenthood in CF and linking with maternity care
- February 2024: QI Share & Learn on CFTR modulators: nutrition, weight management and body image
We also gather case studies of QI projects in CF services.
Summaries of previous events
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Quality Improvement (QI) working group
Our QI working group is made up of people with CF, their families, CF professionals and members of the Trust.
The group has co-produced the Trust’s QI strategy and is helping to develop key projects to improve CF care and services.
Take a look at our meeting notes:
If you are a person with CF, a family member, or a CF health professional and think you might be interested in becoming a member of our QI working group, please complete our Expression of Interest Form.
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New model of care for CF
NHS England are developing a new model of care, which they hope will enable people with CF to receive specialist care and treatment while minimising disruption to their daily lives. This project aims to produce new guidance for regional teams to help them join up care for CF patients between primary, community, secondary and specialist care providers.
NHS England will gather feedback and insight from patients, carers and clinicians to inform and revise the pathway and models of care to best serve the changing needs of CF patients as they move through paediatric care and into adult services. You can find out more by emailing them at cysticfibrosisproject.spring22@nhs.net.
This review of CF services in England comes at a time of significant change for our community following the introduction of new modulator treatments and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s vital that proposals are informed by the insights and experiences of the CF community and sound evidence including from the UK CF Registry. We expect NHSEI to update on the next steps towards the summer of 2022.
We’ll continue to advocate for better investment and smarter innovation across the NHS, so that everyone in our community can receive the best possible care.
UK CF Registry
The Registry is an anonymised database of people with CF in the UK - a powerful tool for monitoring and auditing the care that people receive.
Resources for professionals
Explore the resources, programmes and awards that we offer to CF professionals to help them provide the best support they possible can to people with cystic fibrosis.
Helpline
Contact our wonderful helpline team by telephone or email, Monday to Friday, for answers to your questions.