Focus on the National Health Service

LibQUAL+ International Workshop

2 – 3 February 2006

In the next half hour……

Introduction to NHS

The drive for quality

The NHS pilot

Implications

The National Health Service (NHS)

Large scale organisation

1.3 million staff

Largest organisation in Europe

3rd biggest employer in the world

NHS structures

Variety of care providers

Acute Trusts – hospital-based Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) – mainly

community based Mental Health Trusts – a combination Ambulance Trusts NHS Direct – telephone and online

A local snapshot

Avon Gloucestershire & Wiltshire

The local level

Avon Gloucestershire and Wiltshire Strategic Health Authority (SHA) 7 Acute Trusts 12 Primary Care Trusts 3 Ambulance Trusts 2 Mental Health/ Social Care Trusts NHS Direct

25 service providers in a single SHA

South West region has 3 SHAs

Avon Gloucestershire and Wiltshire Dorset and Somerset Peninsula Health Authority (Devon

and Cornwall)

28 SHAs in England….. How many organisations providing

care? See…..www.nhs.uk

NHS is a very complex organisation

Lots of organisations, lots of staff groups

Avon Gloucestershire and Wiltshire 17,000 nurses 1,450 GPs 1,300 consultants 3,000 allied health professionals

2003 figures

Some of the issues NHS faces

Tribal nature of NHS staff

Hospital vs community settings

IT – access and skills

Time constraints

Awareness

Priorities

The Constant Library User

NHS loves to reorganise

In the service, the one constant is the patient

In NHS libraries, the one constant is the user

The quality agenda

Drivers Patient-centred NHS Clinical governance Evidence based practice

Implications High quality information Summarised evidence Role of library staff

Reasons for the NHS pilot

To explore applicability of LibQUAL+ in NHS environment as a tool for measuring customer satisfaction and benchmarking services

To reduce duplication of effort across libraries in the NHS

Participants in the NHS Pilot

10 libraries participating, in a range of settings: Including teaching hospitals, community-

based services, professional body Participant libraries are geographically

dispersed

Challenges for the NHS Pilot

Demographics

Survey language

Reaching users

Time

Site libraries

Evaluating the pilot

Will consider

The process

The instrument

The results

Implications for a successful pilot

LibQUAL+ may become part of performance measurement toolkit and be used routinely by NHS libraries

LibQUAL+ would be linked to National Service Framework for Libraries

http://www.library.nhs.uk/forlibrarians/nlhprogramme/nsf

Implications for pilot participants

Can compare effectiveness of tool with home-grown surveys

Opportunity to benchmark services Should facilitate discussion and

sharing of best practice Improve service quality

Contact details

Colin Davies

colin.davies@cfh.nhs.uk