4 minute read
Introducing Healthcare World Standards
To understand the quality of our healthcare delivery we must understand the quality of our healthcare outcomes, says Emma Sheldon MBE, Chief Operating Officer, Healthcare World
As the way in which we deliver healthcare has evolved, so should the way in which we measure its e ectiveness. There is more data available to us now than ever before and, as such, we should be utilising that data to understand how well our systems, hospitals, clinicians and treatments are performing.
It is no longer good enough to grade a healthcare setting based on its facilities or whether it employs the right practices and procedures. It is the function of healthcare to optimise health, and therefore the clinical services we provide should be based on outcomes. This is where the concept of the Healthcare World Standards comes in.
The simplest metric of all is an understanding of the number of patients that come to a provider sick and leave well. But that is, of course, a massive oversimplification of what we’re trying to achieve.
To provide a meaningful analysis we need to consider a huge range of factors and those factors need to be broken down into the full spectrum of specialisms. The measures of success in cancer care, for example, may have commonality with those of general practice but they will di er in some crucial ways.
And to understand whether those measures represent high quality healthcare we need some baseline measurements against which we can measure success.
Enter Healthcare World
The Healthcare World Standards story begins in 2019 when a round table discussion, facilitated by Healthcare World Magazine between payors and providers in the Middle East, reached the question of quality.
Whether you are a payor or a patient, the most obvious question around the treatment of specific conditions is always going to be where, who and what.
If I am su ering from a particular condition, my primary concern is going to be the best place for treatment, who will be the doctor treating me and which procedure are they are going to follow. But at the truly primitive level my question will be far simpler, will you make me better?
Our panel concluded that, beyond existing accreditation of facilities and policies, there is no standard way to define which hospital would be the best place to be treated other than anecdotal evidence.
Whether we are talking about a stroke, a heart attack or maternity care, there is simply no reliable way of telling facilities apart.
The solution to the problem came in the creation of a set of individual standards for particular specialities and areas of care which we started to develop in 2020, starting with an initial grouping of the most obvious and common areas of treatment to include:
• General Practice (primary care) • Maternity • Cancer • Orthopaedics • Cardiothoracic • Mental Health • Paediatrics • General Surgery
Benchmarking
The real issue with creating these standards, though, was the question of how to benchmark. What could we find that would create a real and meaningful yardstick against which to measure the quality of clinical services from all around the globe?
Headquartered, as we are, in the UK, the answer was staring us in the face - the UK’s National Health Service or NHS. Formed in 1948, the NHS is the world’s only truly free at the point of delivery health system.
Paid for by taxation and available to every citizen of the United Kingdom, the NHS has a track record of delivering the highest quality of specialist care at an incredible level of value to the taxpayer. It is independent of insurers or commercial issues and has been ranked
Emma Sheldon MBE Chief Operating Officer Healthcare World
consistently over the last ten years as the best health system in the world by the Commonwealth Fund.
It is this independence from global markets along with the demonstrable quality and reputation of the NHS, combined with some of the world-renowned names such as Great Ormond Street Hospital for Paediatrics and The Royal Marsden Hospital for Cancer, which makes the NHS the ideal health system against which to benchmark our Healthcare World Standards.
As you will see over the next couple of pages, in 2022 we came together with Health Care First, an NHS primary care provider in the North of England, Methods Analytics as a data consultancy working with NHS England, and Cigna as a global insurer representing the markets we are looking to serve to create the first Healthcare World Standard.
Measuring the e iciency and quality of primary care against the levels of quality, provision and access to care enjoyed by UK citizens is the first step for the Healthcare World Standards programme.
Over the coming months we will be working with a variety of NHS organisations to create standards in all of the specialist areas described above.
By mid 2022 we expect to be able to o er healthcare providers, regulators and insurers all over the world the first truly meaningful, outcomes-based accreditation standards in clinical services. We hope you’ll join us on the journey.
To find out more please email emma.sheldon@thetradeagency.co.uk
