Quality Improvement

• What is Quality Improvement?
• What does the QI Team do?
• Current projects
• Get involved

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 – do you receive the care and information you need, when you need it?

Effective – are the treatments and advice you’re receiving evidence-based? Do they 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 was established in 2018 to provide resources that help to support CF centres across the UK to improve the quality of the care they provide.

Current projects

Patient Reported Experience Measures (PREMs) Survey

Our UK-wide patient experience survey will give participating CF centres insights into what their patients and families think about the health care they receive. Results of the survey will be compared to the UK average for each question, to allow centres to benchmark their performance. This will help CF teams identify potential areas for change. Running the PREMs survey every three years will track how patients’ feelings about their care change over time and help CF teams measure if their QI projects have had a positive impact.

Staffing tool

This online tool, completed by the centres, aims to give a yearly snapshot of staffing resources in participating UK CF centres. Centres receive a report showing how their staffing and vacancy levels compare to UK averages.

How can you get involved?

Quality Improvement Working Group

Our new Quality Improvement working group, made up of people with CF, their families, CF professionals and members of the Trust, held their first official meeting on Wednesday 23 September. The group is working to form our QI strategy and develop key projects improve CF care and services. We will provide a summary of the first meeting soon. 

Patient Reported Experience Measures update

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have decided to close this version of the paediatric PREMs survey. This is in acknowledgement of the fact that CF centres have drastically changed how they are providing care, so that care experiences pre and during the pandemic are not directly comparable.

The paediatric PREMs survey ran for over seven months and offered patients and parents the opportunity to tell us how they feel about the care they receive in their CF centre. Twenty-five paediatric centres participated, and we are thrilled to say that we have received nearly 700 surveys, exceeding our 20% response target. We would like to thank the participating centres, parents and patients for contributing to the success of this project. We aim to have the centre and UK PREMs reports available by the end of this year.

Adults with cystic fibrosis will have the opportunity to complete a modified survey in late 2020/early 2021.

Staffing tool update

Centre-level staffing reports were sent out in April 2020 and the UK Staffing Report can be accessed here. We are happy to say that 78% of UK centres participated and we would like to thank them for their contribution.

Download the Staffing Report (383KB)

Participating centres

• Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge
• Alder Hey NHS Children’s Hospital, Liverpool
• Birmingham Children's Hospital
• Bristol Royal Hospital for Children
• Crosshouse Hospital, Ayr
• Derriford Hospital, Devon
• Great North Children's Hospital, Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle Upon Tyne
• Hull and East Yorkshire Teaching Hospital
• James Cook University Hospital, Middlesbrough
• John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford
• Leicester Royal Infirmary
• Noah's Ark Children's Hospital for Wales
• Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital (Jenny Lind Children's Hospital)
• North West Midlands CF Centre, Royal Stoke University Hospital
• Nottingham Children's Hospital (Queen's Medical Centre)
• Royal Brompton Hospital, London
• Royal Cornwall Hospital
• Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital
• Royal Hospital for Children, Glasgow
• Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh
• Royal London Children’s Hospital
• Royal Manchester Children's Hospital
• Sheffield Children's Hospital
• Southampton Children's Hospital
• University Hospital Wishaw, Lanarkshire