Staying on top of the mnemonics is one of the constant challenges. So what do you think this blog is going to cover? Well if you google sequin you will find a disambiguation page on Wikipedia; and did you know that Dr David Goldsmith (Consultant Renal Physician & Clinical Lead for the Kidney Care National Collection) is a regular user of the word disambiguate. But David could not be responsible for a quip: a clever, usually taunting remark (unless perhaps in relation to my particular football team).
The Kidney Care Specialised Commissioners Forum met recently and there was a lot of talk of CQUINs and QuIPs. CQUINs or the Commissioning for Quality and Innovation Framework aims to use payments to deliver real benefits for patients and improve quality. To quote from the Operating Framework “the aim of the CQUIN system is to support a shift towards the vision set out in High Quality Care for All of an NHS where quality is the organising principle”. For Acute and Foundation Trusts, the value of the CQUINs payment is to be 0.5% of total contract value and up to 25% of the scheme is allowed for improving data. Rob Lusardi (Assistant Director, West Midlands Specialised Commissioning Team (SCT)) gave a neat presentation on CQUINs for renal services. The West Midlands SCT have been working with their Kindey Care Network to develop and introduce quality improvement plans designed to support the renal units in submitting all the mandatory data of the National Renal Dataset. Getting robust, high quality data and turning that into information for patients, clinicians and commissioners is seen as a vital first stage in developing performance improvement targets for each provider unit for 2010/11.
If you haven’t already guessed it, QuIPs are Quality Improvement Plans.
Similar schemes are been considered and developed in other Strategic Health Authority and Specialised Commissioning Group areas. One of the great strengths of the kidney community is that colleagues in different parts of the country are happy to share their progress, methods and what worked and what didn’t work with others across the country.
I attach a link to the slides Rob showed at the Commissioning Event. I expect that many, perhaps even all, of the Kidney Care Networks and Specialised Commissioning Groups will want to consider how they can use these and other approaches set out in High Quality Care for All to ensure that quality is the organising principle for kidney care.
