Mike O'Brien (Minister of State (Health Services), Department of Health; North Warwickshire, Labour)

Essentially, what we have here is the collection of information and its publication for a particular purpose. That purpose is not only to inform people but to ensure a focus on quality. That arises out of the review by my noble Friend Lord Darzi into high quality care for all. He determined that quality relates to three “domains”—patient safety, effectiveness of care, and patient experience. I wish to set out what we mean by that and say something more generally about the quality accounts, so that hopefully people have a clear picture of our purpose and of why we are focusing on quality, and understand therefore why we cannot accept the amendments. I appreciate and am grateful for the indication from the official Opposition both that they support the concept of quality accounts and that the amendments are probing ones, designed to elicit more information about the nature of quality accounts.

We want to develop quality accounts to see whether the focus in the “High Quality Care for All” review is being used by organisations in the health service. That means that they are, for example, protecting patient safety by eradicating health care-acquired infections and avoidable accidents. It is about the effectiveness of care, from the clinical procedure that the patient receives to their quality of life after treatment, and it is about the patient’s entire experience of the NHS, ensuring that they are treated with compassion, dignity and respect in a clean, safe and well-managed environment.

Those are the three key areas that we want to focus on, and we intend quality accounts to contain a core of nationally determined quality indicators, so that  comparisons can be made between providers. It is important that like can be compared with like, in respect of that core. The greater part of each quality account, however, will be determined locally, to ensure that providers can publish information that is relevant to the type of health care services that they provide, to the locally identified priorities for clinical improvement and to patients and other members of the public in their area.

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