Building a community to improve quality in 2023 and beyond

In 2023, the College Centre for Quality Improvement (CCQI) is looking to help more mental health services improve their quality, by growing the membership of the Centre’s quality and accreditation networks.

We recently published an e-book (embedded below this article) that explains how the networks function, the value they bring to clinicians and patients and how services, both inpatient and community, can join.

The CCQI has been running quality and accreditation networks for over 20 years and works with approximately 1,550 mental health services around the UK and internationally.

The first network was the Quality Network for Inpatient CAMHS (QNIC) in 2001. QNIC was born out of a recognition that services often varied significantly in quality and had limited opportunities to learn from peers working in similar services.

There are now 28 quality networks applying the same ethos of collaboration, mutual support and shared learning to improve care in a wide range of services and specialties.

The CCQI uses a well-honed model of self- and peer-review methodology. The networks are multi-disciplinary and are delivered with input from patients and carers with lived experience of using services.

Services participating can benchmark themselves again similar services and those meeting high numbers of standards can be accredited by the College to demonstrate their quality to those who fund or use the service.

A little-known fact is that the CCQI offers a membership route for services that have an ambition to improve their clinical quality but are not yet ready to undergo the full accreditation process.

Services with a developmental subscription still have access all the benefits of membership, including support from the CCQI team but can use the process to develop an action plan for improvement.

CCQI also regularly supports services where statutory regulators and inspectorates have raised concerns about the service (e.g. the Care Quality Commission, Healthcare Improvement Scotland, Healthcare Inspectorate Wales and the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority).

Please share a link to our e-book with your colleagues in your organisations who have a particular interest in quality improvement.

Back to our December 2022 eNewsletter.