Can Twitter data analysis help improve service quality in hospital settings? #EvidenceLive

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Our #EvidenceLive blogging team look at a study of Twitter traffic and service quality performance in hospital settings in the US.

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Move towards more coordinated services and the value of targeting populations, says the Health Foundation

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This is a critique of a report from the Health Foundation looking at the coordinating services and targeting populations rather than acute health goals.

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CQC State of Care Report and research for quality improvement: Elves mine the archive

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Sarah Carr takes a look at CQC’s State of Adult Social Care Report 2014/15 and corrals the elves in to mine the Social Care Elf archive for some research blogs to help adults social care providers improve services quality.

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An integrated leadership approach needed to improve care

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In this blog, Caroline De Brún considers the latest research evidence on leadership in health care and key characteristics required for effective leadership, published in a new report by the King’s Fund.

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“The patient is the single most important safety barometer” according to roundtable discussion

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 Introduction Patient safety has featured heavily in the news recently, with the Mid Staffordshire inquiry, childrens heart surgery in Leeds and the investigation into deaths of babies at Furness General Hospital.  It is a top priority for commissioners.  The Health Foundation recently published an evidence review Involving patients in improving safety (1).  This report follows [read the full story…]

The role of commissioners in improving the NHS

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“Healthcare success in the future will be judged on the quality of outcomes.” From April 2013, improvement in the NHS will be driven by clinical commissioners. The NHS Commissioning Board has published this planning framework with supporting material to help health organisations meet three key objectives: Seamless management of organisational change Capacity-provision for clinical commissioning [read the full story…]

Trail showed that distant feedback improved quality of panoramic radiographs in short term.

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  Panoramic radiographs are regularly used in dental practice and a number of studies have highlighted that the quality of these films is often less the optimal.T he aim of this trial was to assess the value of a quality improvement programme for panoramic radiography. 40 volunteer dental practices were randomly allocated to active (n=20) [read the full story…]

Lean processes for improving blood science services

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“A ‘right first time’ approach is encouraged and endorsed by commissioners, clinical teams and users to ensure safety and efficiency.” NHS Improvement has been working closely with the Department of Health and a range of healthcare organisations, testing and implementing improvements with over 250 sites across the country and providing an improvement tool to over [read the full story…]

Performance measures in health care: new report from RAND

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An independent evaluation of the use of performance measures for accountability and quality improvement from RAND Corporation reports on how these are being used by a wide array of organizations in the USA. The availability of data from which to construct measures was the single most important factor cited as either facilitating or impeding their [read the full story…]