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About Quality Management System

Reliable delivery of high quality care requires an organisational approach that goes beyond quality improvement to one which is inclusive of all the key components of quality management.

We have worked with our stakeholders to develop a Quality Management System (QMS) Framework (Figure 1) which supports health and social care organisations to apply a consistent and coordinated approach to the management of the quality of health and care services. This requires senior leadership support and a balanced focus across all of the components of quality management.

The QMS Framework is now being tested and adapted in real time as we continue to learn from our own and others' experiences of implementing quality management across health and health and care systems.

 

Figure 1: The QMS Framework (working draft 4)

Figure 1: The QMS Framework (working draft 4)

Benefits of QMS

Effective quality management should lead to a variety of benefits for those who access services as well as those who deliver services.

It can help organisations to:

  • develop processes to help them understand their priorities for improvement
  • design appropriate interventions to make those improvements
  • develop processes to help maintain acceptable levels of quality and early warning to highlight when quality slips; and
  • build knowledge and accelerate improvement in outcomes

This will support every member of staff, from service to board level to feel confident:

  • that they understand what is important to those who use their organisation and its services
  • that they are supported and connected, through leadership vision and behaviours, to deliver high-quality services
  • that they have access to relevant data to enable them to know when they are doing well and to know quickly if quality slips; and 
  • that they are supported to deliver high quality services and improve those services every day

 

Components

For additional information on each of the components, see this diagram.

 

Additional QMS Resources

To sustain a continuous focus on quality, the right conditions need to be in place at each level of the system. We have developed a suite of practical tools to support organisations in the creation of these conditions.