Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) - UK

The Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership has been set up by two professional bodies who represent the vast majority of nurses and doctors practising in England and Wales (The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and the Royal College of Nursing), and a national body for patients and representative organisations, National Voices.

We are an independent charity and company limited by guarantee.

The Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) was established in April 2008 to promote quality in healthcare, and in particular to increase the impact that clinical audit has on healthcare quality
HQIP sees clinical audit as one essential tool in a much broader range of activity to improve quality in healthcare. We believe that clinical audit is a quality improvement assessment and methodology to be used alongside a range of other techniques under the broader Quality Improvement banner. HQIP will promote any improvement methodology that has proven effectiveness and appropriateness.

The UK Government 2007 White Paper ‘Trust, Assurance and Safety' called for the revitalisation of clinical audit in order to deliver its full potential. The subsequent strategy embodied in the Next Stage Review, ‘High Quality Care For All', in 2008, stressed more broadly that quality and quality improvement, including clinical audit, was the centre of improving the NHS, and launched a stream of activity to drive quality, including work to improve clinical audit.
HQIP believe that building both national and local level partnerships between clinicians, clinical teams, managers and patients is at the heart of this. Supporting local staff, fostering active dissemination of information and implementing quality improvement initiatives is key – in this way we will ensure quality measurement is the engine which drives improvement.
Under contract to the Department of Health and Welsh Assembly, HQIP works in England to commission national clinical audits and to promote local clinical audit, and in Wales to commission national clinical audits which cover Wales. HQIP currently has no remit in Scotland or Northern Ireland, although those who are working in clinical audit in these areas, or who are working in local clinical audit in Wales, may download any content from this site.
HQIP hosts the contract to manage and develop the National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme (NCAPOP). Their purpose is to engage clinicians across England and Wales in systematic evaluation of their clinical practice against standards and to support and encourage improvement in the quality of treatment and care. The programme comprises more than 20 clinical audits that cover care provided to people with a wide range of medical, surgical and mental health conditions and will be extended to other areas of healthcare that are considered a priority by the National Clinical Audit Advisory Group (NCAAG) and the Department of Health.

With separate funding we also work at local level to support individual trusts who need help in improving healthcare quality.

HQIP is developing programmes that establish the competences required to work in clinical audit and will commission national training programme for any professional who works in clinical audit. We are exploring the development of a national body for clinical audit staff with associate status for those who work on audits as part of their clinical roles.
HQIP produces extensive resources in audit to improve the quality and effectiveness of clinical audit. HQIP is shortly to announce a new on-line Forum for clinical audit professionals and those working on audits to communicate between each other and manage networks, share documents and arrange events.

Over time, HQIP intends to diversify its activities to cover other areas of quality improvement. Our belief is that the types of work HQIP carries out can be easily expanded and widened to cover other areas of quality improvement. Our approach is a bottom up, representative approach, rather than one top down. Owned as we are by professional bodies, we see ourselves as representative of professions and patients, not representative of Government.