The British Standards Institution (BSI) has developed a code of practice for the NHS and private healthcare providers of all sizes.
The BSI said the code of practice, the first ever international consensus standard on healthcare quality, has been developed by BSI in recognition of the increasing demands on the NHS and healthcare sector globally to help increase the delivery of high-quality, patient-centric care.
As the UK healthcare sector faces pressures including the Covid pandemic backlog, increasing patient numbers, and an ageing population with complex disease profiles, the BSI added its code of practice aims to “provide a roadmap to help ensure treatment and care pathways are more efficient and ultimately improve outcomes for patients and healthcare professionals”.
Applicable to all healthcare organisations, including the NHS and private providers of all sizes, Healthcare organisation management – Management systems for quality in healthcare organisations (BS ISO 7101:2023) has been published by BSI, the UK national standards body, and brings together agreed international best practice to present a quality template.
Its focus includes creating and maintaining processes that ensure timely, safe, effective, equitable, and people-centred care, helping organisations meet statutory and regulatory requirements, and ensuring there is the opportunity both to enhance the service user experience during care and to continually improve healthcare quality.
Written by healthcare experts from 24 countries including the UK, and in collaboration with more than 40 national standard bodies, it contains guidance and requirements designed to help healthcare organisations become more efficient, more sustainable and better able to comply with external legislation and regulation.
It is designed to enable the development of a healthcare management system that can:
- Deliver consistently higher-quality healthcare
- Embed a culture of quality, starting with senior leaders
- Systematically identify and address risk
- Ensure greater patient and workforce well-being
- Control service delivery closely
- Monitor and evaluate performance
- Drive continual improvements.
Rob Turpin, head of sector, healthcare, BSI said: “This new framework is designed to provide a roadmap to drive up quality across the healthcare sector and ensure the delivery of patient-focused care that ultimately benefits us all across society.
“With the UK healthcare under significant pressure to manage challenges including an ageing population and the Covid backlog, this is an opportune moment for the sector to look at new strategies and approaches.
“This international management system standard captures, distils and spreads agreed international best practices and offers the potential to help organisations attract and retain staff in a people-centred health system, address risk and meet growing patient expectations and cope with increasing demand.”
Majid Zahoor, global director, healthcare sector, BSI, added: “The healthcare quality management system focuses on improving a healthcare organisation’s capability, resilience and outcomes through the improvement of its underlying management system.
“The standard prioritises the need to refocus on a patient-centred delivery framework, systematic management of clinical and non-clinical risk, and an emphasis on staff-centred training, wellbeing and professional development programs.”