Balancing Quality, Safety and Value- an Olympic challenge

Kidney care teams up and down the country are facing an Olympic challenge to deliver the best possible healthcare for people with kidney disease in a timely, efficient and effective way. Our kidney care challenge is part of the broader health, healthcare and self-care challenge facing the health system globally, as we shift from a 20^th century cure focused system to a 21^st century long-term conditions chronic disease management paradigm.

To take the Olympic analogy further, our job is not to be the best individual kidney care professionals in the country. We are the support teams for patients and carers; our job is to help each and every one of our patients to achieve their aims and gold medals in life. We are the construction teams, the coaches and trainers, the safety, communications and measurement experts. The stars are the patients and populations we serve. We need to motivate and enable. We should not be good losers- when our patients do badly we should consider why, and learn from that so that month-by-month outcomes improve. We need to measure what is important to patients and judge success by those standards.

I am confident we can compete at Olympic level. The work individuals and kidney care teams with patients have been doing over the last view years has earned us that place.